Family Game Night is a tradition my mom started when my brother and I were in high school. She was a single mom and wanted to create an activity that would let her spend quality time with her kids, and she knew we were more likely to chat about our lives when we sat around a table playing a silly game.
This was probably the early aughts, since my brother graduated high school in 2005 and I followed him in 2006. It’s now 2026, and Family Game Night is still going strong. That’s more than two decades of Saturday nights sitting around a table, playing board games and card games and whatever random game we can get our hands on. And still, it is where we talk about our lives.
These days, Family Game Night only happens during the NFL offseason because during the football season, we’re hanging out at my mom’s house every Sunday from 1PM – 7:30PM, watching the games. But after the Super Bowl, we start them back up and see each other every other Saturday evening.
Family Game Night has gone through a whole bunch of changes in the last two decades, the most wonderful of which is that we now have two new members at our table. My nephews (J is 18 and D is 11) join us whenever they don’t have work (for J) or plans with friends or sports. I really like that the boys are older and we’ve been able to graduate from some of the more kid-friendly games, even though we have to be cognizant that D is still young and still grasping the concept of games like Scattergories.
We have an assortment of games we cycle through during a typical game night. Our favorites being:
- (The aforementioned) Scattergories
- What Do You Meme? (we play the kid-friendly version, so it’s a lot of potty humor)
- Trivial Pursuit (okay, I’m the only one who considers this a favorite, and everyone else groans when I bring it out)
- Yahtzee (we learned early on that my nephew D is a whiz at math from this game!)
- Monopoly
- Life
- Blank Space
- Five Second Rule
- Uno
- Qwixx
Usually, we order pizza, and my mom and I alternate making dessert. We start game night around 5PM and typically go until close to 9PM. There is a lot of good, old-fashioned roasting. (D is actually better than any of us. One time, he wrote down “Alexander Hamilton” in a Scattergories category that was “U.S. President,” and when I gently told him Alexander Hamilton was never president, he took out his phone, looked it up, and then said to me, “Do you enjoy crushing kids’ dreams?” Ouch!) And there is a lot of laughter. Side-splitting laughter where I’m crying and wheezing because I can’t catch my breath.
Family Game Night is my absolute favorite tradition, and it’s amazing that we’ve managed to keep things going this long. My mom knew what she was doing: She was giving us a place to have fun but also receive her undivided attention. She was keeping things casual, so we felt comfortable sharing openly about our lives. I don’t think she ever thought this tradition would continue through high school, our twenties, and now our thirties, but that’s my mom for you. She knew what we needed, what we still need, and she provides the space for us. She’s one of a kind.
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