We want to persuade you to dance together with your family or make movement a normal part of your home life.
We know that not everyone enjoys dancing, and that’s okay. Maybe you never learned the popular dances in your culture and so you think you don’t how to dance. Maybe you feel silly dancing. Maybe you fear it will call too much attention to yourself.
Everyone can dance. Dancing is just movement, joyful movement, often paired with music, as an expression of the heart. So, you don’t have to know how to dance in a formal sort of way! Dancing, in our opinion, can be twirling your daughter around the kitchen. It can be moving your hips when the praise music comes on. It can be singing into spatula microphones while baking with your son. It can be adding hand motions to songs you hear with your toddler. It can be the whole family choreographing a song for Christmas. It can be your two teen girls creating a routine for their favorite worship song. It can be mom and dad dancing around the kitchen. Dancing may feel silly, but in your home, if it brings joyful laughter and deepens your relationship with your kids, that’s a wonderful thing.
The kind of dance we want to persuade you to integrate into your family life is just movement inspired by joy and expressed in togetherness. It’s the unself-conscious inclination to express yourself in movement. Here are seven reasons why you want to dance together as a family.
1. Dancing is fun
Dancing is simply something fun to do as a family. Families are a precious gift from God. Each member is a gift—Mom and Dad were gifts from God to one another, and through their loving relationship, he gave to them the gift of children (Proverbs 18:22; Psalm 127:3-5). God wants families to enjoy one another! If your family enjoys dancing, use it to bond and spend quality time together.
2. Dancing humbles us
Dancing helps us not to take ourselves too seriously, and thus humbles us. Romans 12:3 encourages us, “I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think” (ESV). We shouldn’t think of ourselves as more important than we are, or in modern terms, to think we’re “too cool” for certain things. Some people don’t dance because they’re self-conscious when they would love to dance if no one was around or they felt no condemnation. Dancing as a family encourages kids and parents to let go of pride, and just enjoy one another—even if they look ridiculous.
In fact, there’s a time in the Bible when King David was so overjoyed, he danced around all wild, and when he was confronted, he said he was willing to look even sillier because his priority wasn’t looking cool but celebrating the Lord (2 Samuel 6:21-22). Dancing keeps your family humble by helping you not taking yourselves too seriously.
3. Dancing can help us learn
Sometimes movement helps us learn. If you are trying to get your kids to learn great music filled with Scripture (Colossians 3:16), adding motions and movement to the song may help them retain it better. It may get them more wholistically involved in learning Scripture verses, hymns, or songs if they engage with their whole body.
As we said earlier, dancing can be as simple as making up motions to your favorite worship song. Dancing could take the form of using movement to engage your kids during Bible reading time—having them act out what you read. Moving as a family can be a means of helping your kids retain truth!
4. Dancing makes expression normative in the home
Dancing may encourage your kids to be more expressive in the home. God is a Father who loves to hear the cries, desires, and cares of his kids (Psalm 62:8; Psalm 37:4; 1 Peter 5:7). Parents who love the Lord want to welcome their kids into the same sort of relational intimacy—creating a home life where their kids’ cries, desires, and cares are expressed and cherished.
The more self-conscious kids are, the less likely they are to express themselves to you. Having a hospitable attitude towards kids expressing themselves through dance creates a no-shame environment where kids know they can be fully honest and transparent with their parents. If your kids know they can try and fail at silly dance moves in the home without shame, they may also grow to express tough questions and big emotions, knowing Mom and Dad will receive them with grace.
5. Dancing tells your kids that believers in Jesus are joyful
Kids learn by observation. To see Mom and Dad physically moved by their joy in Jesus, whether that’s moving along to a worship song while baking, dancing all silly with the kids, or just exuberant in their day-to-day living, tells your kids that you take joy in Jesus. It tells them that he is delightful, and your joy in him truthfully testifies to his character. He is a God who sings over those who belong to him (Zephaniah 3:17), and so he loves when we act like beloved children who belong to a happy God!
6. Dancing is a way to enjoy spiritual songs
The Bible tells us to plant God’s Word into our hearts through song (Colossians 3:16). Dancing is usually paired with song. Dancing is just a sweet, creative way to enjoy biblically rich music, and to fill our homes with expressions of praise for God. It’s an opportunity to introduce your kids to fun music that honors the Lord.
7. Dancing fosters love
If you’re a husband and wife without kids, dancing is a wonderful way to keep your God-given affection for one another hot! God is for your marriage, and desires to help you keep your vows for a lifetime (Mark 10:9). Dancing may be a gift for you to grow in love with your spouse. It might be a date-night activity in your home—and that can be a holy thing.
And maybe as you learn to enjoy dance, you will then develop a desire to share dance with your kids, and it will grow into a way your family deeply enjoys spending time with one another.
If you do have kids, twirling your kids around, laughing with them, encouraging them, and moving around with them can all be expressions of love, togetherness, and intimacy. Dancing can nurture the love for your children which God delights for you to have.
We could ask you to think of other reasons to motivate you to dance as a family, but we have to admit, it’s very stifling to write an article about dancing while seated at a desk, and I’m sure for you it’s getting tough to sit still and keep reading.
Maybe while you think about what you have read here, turn on some music. If you’re brave, break the ice by being the first to bust a move in your home. Invite your kids to DJ, invite your spouse to dance, start encouraging the toddler to groove, and have a great time loving Jesus in your home through dance and loving your family by investing intentional time having fun with them for the glory of God and the joy of your kids.