Hot Tub Fun - Group Hot Tub

It can be a long wait for children to grow to the age of adult conversation and exchange of ideas and deep thought. But, if you anticipate those days when you can share that kind of friendship, you better start building it right now. From the age of five or six on, your children may join you in the hot tub or spa for twenty to thirty minutes of concentrated and relaxed family conversation.

Some cautions need to be addressed first. Small children, by size not age, do not belong in the hot tub at all. In addition to sanitation issues, the heat of the tub or spa can raise their body temperatures very quickly, before you can tell by looking at them. These raised temperatures have caused injury, even fatal injury, to children. What ever you do, do not mistake languor in anyone for relaxation. Get them out of the tub, cooled down with a tepid shower and some cool, not cold, water drunk immediately.

Assuming your children are of an age to enjoy the water safely, your hot tub or spa can enhance your family life in several ways.

Your spa or hot tub brings everyone together, really close together. Much like the dinner table, you circle the edge of the hot tub facing inward making eye contact with one other. Unable and unwilling to "escape", all other intrusions diminish and one on one attention reinforces your care for each other. It is not an activity sought out by enemies but one chosen by friends and loved ones.

If you're lucky enough to have extended family nearby, this may be the way to bring the wisdom of generations together with the spontaneity of youth. Stories received and told will remain in memory long after the hot tub cools and the loved ones pass on.

Distractions of media, telephone and computer are set aside for twenty to thirty minutes. While this short time probably will not induce a wholesale reduction of electronic interaction, family time spent in the hot tub or spa does provide a necessary mental and physical break. It reinforces the idea that people, especially them, are more important to you than things.

As everybody winds down, inconsequential conversation gives way to contemplative companionship in the soothing hot tub waters. Soft evening skies of summer or clear, crisp winter starscapes seen from the enveloping hot tub waters bring all closer to nature.

While it is not the time to "bring up" controversial subjects, when guards go down, issues of concern surface. Your hot tub or spa provides a quiet time to allow this to happen. Serious discussions may take place without forcing them, and problems that loom so large in children's' minds dwindle.

A regular relaxed time in the hot tub or spa with no stressful agenda allows concerns to be addressed over a period of months. Advice may be sought and non judgmentally given. One shot, fix you up lectures become a thing of the past.

Making use of your hot tub or spa to bring everyone together is a magnificent investment in family relationships, far beyond any momentary health or relaxation benefits. Quiet moments, outside the hot tub, will be easier to come by when you have taken the time to really be there with your family. And, it will be remembered that "A good time was had by all."