How To Spend More Quality Time With Your Child
Practice Parenting Meditation
When you're overwhelmed with your responsibilities, it's easy to toggle into automatic pilot with your kids. But if your mind is elsewhere during the precious moments you've worked hard to preserve, you have lost your kids' childhood just as surely as if you hadn't spent the time with them at all. Instead, try to stay in the moment with a "parenting meditation," in which you focus on seeing your kids, hearing them, understanding them, and really being amazed by what you've created -- living, breathing miracles of nature who are learning like sponges and growing like weeds.
Take Pajama Walks
The hour before bedtime can be chaotic with young children. One of my favorite techniques to help them calm down -- weather permitting -- is an evening pajama walk. Not only will it give your kids gentle, mellow time to decompress, but it will also give you special moments with them that otherwise might have been lost to TV.
The key to pajama walks is the pajamas. Get the kids completely ready for bed -- teeth brushed, faces washed, pj's on. Then put them in their stroller, or on their tricycle, or in their sneakers, and meander slowly around the neighborhood. No snacks en route (their teeth are already brushed!); don't kick a soccer ball along the way; postpone animated conversations until tomorrow. It may take a couple laps, but by the time you arrive back home, your kids will be in a fresh-air trance and ready for bed.
Have Taco Night
Dinner at home with the whole family is special unto itself, but your kids will be even more eager to sit down together when your meal has a theme. You can have taco night, pizza night, Chinese night, egg night, or pancake night. Turn your kitchen into a sushi bar or an Italian bistro once a week. When kids are excited and having fun, they are energized in their conversation and about sharing their news at the table.
Special dinner nights are also a unique opportunity to increase your kids' involvement in cooking with you. When there are recurring themes for dinner, they can assume a bigger role in getting the food to the table because they'll remember the routine from the last time. While they're washing the vegetables, stacking the tortillas, mixing the salsa, grating the cheese, they may be gossiping about what's happening at school. When they leave the house in the morning, be sure to remind them, "Taco night tonight!" They'll look forward to it all day.
Fix It Together
Never repair a leaky faucet, change a tire, paint the fence, or replace the furnace filter without your kids. Home improvements are a great way to spend time with them while teaching them about tools and life at the same time. The attic, the basement, and the crawl space are all classrooms for learning how things work and how to safely fix things. Give them a flashlight, and talk them through the job you're doing. As they get older, hold the flashlight for them. Instead of dreading things that break, you'll see new tiles, built-in shelves, and paint jobs as bonus chances for time with your kids.
Don't Drive Everywhere
The minutes that we "save" by driving our children a short distance to the neighborhood park or a friend's house are actually priceless moments that we lose in the name of convenience. The next time you need to take your children somewhere nearby, try to get there on foot. Walking with your kids is a great way to slow down the pace of your lives and to have more unscripted moments with them. Talk about where you're going, what you're thinking, what they're thinking, what you see on the way, and who said what to whom in school today. Hold hands if your kids haven't gotten too cool for that yet. If you're dropping them off somewhere (a playdate, a piano lesson, karate class) and would normally drive away and return again later, take along a backpack with work or reading and find a quiet place to wait until they're finished. The hour or two that you have alone in a coffee shop or under a shade tree will help you slow down and stay sane. Then pick up your child and walk back home together.
Play Their Games
If you decide to bring video games into your home, do your best to screen them and even learn how to play them so you can experience this part of your kids' world. Why? First, your kids will "kick your butt," to use their phrasing; this is one activity where you'll never have to let them win, and it's a good thing for children to occasionally see their parents as human and vincible. Second, there will be guaranteed hilarity at your lack of dexterity. Finally, some games have somewhat redeeming virtual reality, because they mimic real-world activities such as table tennis, bowling, baseball, skiing, and dancing (which are certainly much better than games where you blow each other up). But set time limits, lest their virtual realities take over their reality.
Posted by:Georgie
Credit:parents.com
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