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Posted by Lisa Hendey in Family on Friday, June 11, 2010 10:00 AM
An article at Zenit this week grabbed my attention with the following headline: “Parents: Children Need More Than 49 Minutes”. The story went on to report about a study done in the United Kingdom in conjunction with National Family Week. Sadly, the study found that 68% of parents surveyed reported that they spent less than the length of a television drama each day with their children, largely due to monetary issues.
I’m not here today to make anyone feel guilty - in fact lately with my teenage sons I find myself craving more time with them as they suddenly seem to want to spend less time with me! Honestly, I thought that along with pointing you to this article, we might spend a few moments today pondering how we can all make more time to spend with our children.
I’m honestly looking for practical solutions here, not ways to make your life more complicated. For me, one solution might be to spend more time cooking with my sons - both of them love to prepare meals and ironically it’s something I’d really rather not do. So I could spend more time with my boys by planning at least a few nights per week where we spent time marketing, preparing and enjoying special family dinners together.
The Zenit article quotes the Executive Director of the Catholic Children’s Society as saying, “It is sadly a symptom of modern life that parents have to work such long hours in order to afford a higher standard of living or to make ends meet. Our society needs to understand that children are often the first casualties when we get the work life balance wrong and that cannot be good for the longer term future of a healthy society.”
Do you find your family struggling with work life balance issues? Can you think of simple ways to reclaim more of those precious moments we all long to share with our children? I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas on this topic!
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Similar to your idea of spending more time cooking with your sons, I try to involve my daughters in the things that I am doing. They are at the age where they love to help, so I try to let them. Yes sometimes it takes longer, but it is worth time spent together. As an added bonus the girls are learning life skills.
I think the solutions will vary based on the ages of the children, family size, whether mom works outside the home, etc. I keep my house neat, but I have learned to really cut corners with housework so that I have more time for my son. They grow up so fast, and you can never get these years back (I know it’s a cliche, but it’s true).
I am way behind on my kids baby albums, so this summer I am going to have a “scrapbooking week” with my kids, when we all sit down together and they will create their own albums. I think I will have them work on the most current pictures, perhaps each doing their own album or a few pages for a family album for this year, and I will work on baby books at the same time. It is not as much of an “escape” as going to a crop might be, and it will take some patience, and the results might not be as pretty, but I hope to remind myself that doing it together will be a great time to reminisce and that will add to the joy of the books.
I also think that doing cooking and other “fun” chore/projects (even trimming hedges with dad is fun for my kids because it involves a power tool) is a great way to make room for time spent together. If you keep a cheerful attitude, and afterward, you can share a treat like homemade popscicles, it doesn’t even seem like work.
What an awesome idea, Mary Alice-so happy/thankful you shared-going to try it too! God bless!
I find doing when doing housework that I periodically need to sit down and rest for a bit. I’ve tried to avoid sitting down at the computer and instead sitting down on the couch. The toddlers bring me books to read to them. 10 or 15 minutes and we’ve read 2 or 3 books and I feel refreshed enough to tackle another room.
I homeschool my 7 kids, ages 14 down to 1. Ironically, I recently realized that, although I am with them practically 24/7, I am not always WITH them. I am learning to laugh and play with the teens, which is hard for me. My kids love the Biggest Loser, so I fold laundry and watch it with them. We don’t watch too much other tv, maybe one or two movies a week with popcorn. The more the tv is on, the radio or stories are playing in the car, and I send them outside to play (to have my quiet time), I realize I am losing precious time with them. Don’t get me wrong, we all need time alone. But our society has taught us to believe that you can’t have time with the kids unless you do expensive or fancy stuff. Learning to die to yourself and just go outside WITH the kids is hard. Turn off the electonics and make cookies, do an exercise video together, read out loud (even to the older ones), go on a hike, the farmer’s market, the park. Volunteer together, do yardwork together and then go for ice cream.
We also try to have entire families over instead of each kid always going their individual direction. There is a place for that too. But they should primarily be with the family. I know friends who do not make their kids do family activities because they would rather be home playing video games than out with the family. That is not an option here. We mostly do things as a family. It seems that the less a kid is with the family, the more disdain they have for siblings and parents alike.
I was SO worried when I took my children out of catholic school that it would drive me nuts to have them here all day, every day. Now I am one of the few in my group of friends that actually enjoys my kids. I can’t imagine how much I would miss them if there were gone.
That’s awesome, Melissa! Personally, I think that as long as electronics are limited, families who are together 24/7 are going to end up with lots of quality time together just by virtue of the interactions that inevitably occur all throughout the day. But it’s great that you are actively seeking out opportunities for this.
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