One of the effects of our children getting older is the fragmenting of our family. 

That sounds dramatic, but although it sometimes makes me (and the youngest siblings) a bit wistful, I’ve come to see that It’s natural and inevitable. During their early years our children ran in a pack: they played together, read the same books, watched the same shows, attended the same activities, listened to the same music, and shared the same friends. But now that we have children ranging in age from 4 to 16, spread across four different schools and countless activities, their pack days are gone. They still love each other and enjoy spending time together when they can, but they are five individuals. 

Nowhere is this more obvious than in our regular weekend game of: Let’s watch something together tonight! What shall we watch? 

Nobody’s interested in watching what the four-year-old wants to watch, because they’ve seen it all before: educational PBS Kids fare like Wild Kratts and Curious George. Our ten-year-old prefers wholesome American Girl films. Our middle schoolers tend towards fantasy/adventure (Studio Ghibli films are favorites.) And our teenage daughter prefers a good romance. Meanwhile, my husband Erick and I just want to skip the negotiating so that we can get to bed before 11 pm.

During a family visit this summer we were bemoaning the difficulty of agreeing upon crowd-pleasing viewing fare, and my sister-in-law asked, “Have you seen Bluey?”

Click here to continue reading this week’s “Faith in Vermont” column in The Addison Independent.