Present and fully engaged
Feeling guilty about not spending time with your kids? Here’s what really matters
SHAYNA Harris works incredibly long hours at her startup, which leaves very little time to play with her two-year-old daughter, whose bedtime is 7pm, just an hour after Harris gets home from work.
Harris, a COO for a Chicagobased startup that stocks healthy food in vending machines, realised very quickly that she’d need to be creative, or her memories with her toddler would consist of a frantic dinner, a hurried bath and an angry bedtime story.
“We cook together when I get home from work,” Harris says. “I bought her cooking utensils for kids, and I let her make a mess – salt is her favourite.”
Thirty minutes later, they sit down to a home-cooked meal that was made from scratch.
Mothers spend an average of 104 minutes a day with their children, while fathers spend 59 minutes, compared with the 54 minutes and 16 minutes mothers and fathers, respectively, spent with them in 1965, according to a 2016 University of California, Irvine study.
But those parents didn’t hang out in front of electronics – a 2016 report finds that parents of tweens and teens spend about nine hours daily using screens – and it’s doubtful that they used their parental minutes trying to squeeze in a day’s worth of errands.
So while 104 minutes may sound like a lot of time, it may not feel like it to parents, especially when they’re being bombarded with Pinterest craft ideas they should be doing with their kids.
Still, there are ways to spend true quality time with your children, even if you’re a working parent who feels you can’t squeeze another minute from your day.
“You don’t have to spend money, plan elaborate activities or do anything special to have quality time with your children,” said Nicole Beurkens, a licensed psychologist.
In fact, you can simply transform your chores into fun games, and encourage your kids to join you, just as Harris did, Beurkens said.
“You’re spending time doing things like cooking, taking the dog for a walk and doing laundry, so why not include your child?” Beurkens asked. “This not only allows for valuable one-to-one time to talk and to connect, but it also teaches them important life skills.”
That’s why Macaire Douglas, owner of Half Pint Shop, a children’s store in Chicago, always turns grocery shopping into a fun adventure.
Her six-year-old plans one meal per week, and they do the shopping together, talking about ingredients and different foods, and when they get home, they cook together.
Even the dreaded bedtime is a game for the Douglas family.
“I time the boys, and we see who can get ready the fastest,” Douglas said. “With my youngest, we sing the ABCs as he brushes his teeth. It may seem like a small thing, but he loves the routine and time I take with him.”
But while doing your chores with your child, the key is to put your electronics away and to really focus on your child.
Jacqueline Fisch avidly follows this advice.
“I put the phone away from the second I pick up the kids from school and daycare. They want to see you and talk to you, even if
they don’t act like it,” said the Illinois-based author, communications coach and mother of two kids, ages six and nine.
If, however, you can snag just five minutes a day beyond chore time to spend with your kids, that would have a significant positive impact on them, said Dan Wolfson, a staff psychologist who specialises in children and families.
A form of therapy called Parent Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), which focuses on improving children’s behaviours through the foundation of a positive parentchild relationship, assigns five minutes per day of child-led play, Wolfson said.
“Children often have many demands and expectations placed on them, so providing a space for the child to lead the play can be extremely powerful,” he said.
“Rather than trying to develop elaborate opportunities for quality time, parents merely need to be present, engaged and attuned to their children to help the child feel connected and cared for.”
As the children get older, the goal remains to create the space for them to feel safe expressing themselves.
Wolfson said taking some quiet time in the evenings to sit with your child without an agenda or electronics can lead to meaningful interactions.
“Ask simple open-ended questions, or prompt them with frames such as the high and low of their days,” Wolfson said.
“Overall, children just want to feel connected to their parents, so don’t worry about the photo opportunities: Simply making yourself fully available for a short amount of time each day will help to create the foundation of safety and care that children long for.”
Aimee Sahlas owns her own company, The Stage Staging Company. She said spending time with her children often takes a backseat.
“One thing that I try to be consistent with is walking them to and from school,” Sahlas says. “We look for nature, play games, chat about our day to come or the one we just had,” Sahlas says.
With her older preteen, convincing her to walk is more difficult, so she relishes volunteering as the carpool mom.
“It’s my only chance to be a fly on the wall to catch all of what those kids are talking about,” Sahlas says. “Shows, boys, drama: It’s the little things.”
It’s all about quality time versus quantity, and in a child’s mind, quality is more valuable than quantity, says Kaleigh Boysen, a Portland, Oregon-based licensed marriage and family therapist, and a parent coach.
If children have lots of time with a parent, but the parent is scattered and multitasking the entire time, the child may end up feeling less connected to the parent, since a significant portion of the time isn’t quality, Boysen says.
“If a child perceives that most of their time spent with a parent is positive and engaging, that is how they will feel about the relationship with the parent overall,” she says.
Make the moment count, even if that moment is in front of the dishwasher.