Family first when juggling how to spend time

AND BABY MAKES FOUR

Time is the biggest challenge for parents. Finding time to do everything that needs to be done at work or around the house, as well as spending enough time with the children.

It’s not easy. As I write this, I’ve got a 2-year-old sitting on the couch watching the Wiggles while wearing underpants rather than nappies for only the third time, a 4-month-old chilling on the floor playing, hopefully, with the dangly things on her play gym, and a cat that’s probably about to bring in a small furry animal, either winged or tailed.

Inside, there are umpteen things on my to-do list which, obviously, need doing, while outside, await half-mowed lawns (ran out of petrol, rookie mistake), weeding, several metres of wood to be split, a shed to tidy and organise, a new lawn to be sown/unrolled, and probably a dozen other things that could easily take a few hours.

I haven’t been back on the bike since that fateful day two weeks ago, I’m beginning to forget, again, what the golf clubs look like, and the wife and I haven’t had a ‘‘date’’ for, well, let’s just say a while and leave it at that. And I’d love to spend more time with Piper and Zach.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I’m lamenting the fact that there aren’t enough hours in the day.

And that’s probably shared by many parents. New Statistics New Zealand figures show the average Kiwi parent spends more than eight hours a day caring for their children, while some mothers of young children spend twice that. Well, duh.

Interestingly, the research reveals how much time parents spend with their children, but parents weren’t asked whether they were satisfied with the amount of time they spend with their children.

Pre-children, I couldn’t imagine why you’d want to spend long periods of time with children. Now I can’t imagine why I wouldn’t want to spend time with them. Zach’s personality develops each day and we have great conversations, although I do think he’s lying about seeing giraffes and elephants on the way into town.

But it’s not just parents of young children who probably would love to spend more time with them. Even parents of older children, even those who have fled the nest, would probably love to spend more time with them.

I was reminded of this last weekend walking the Hump Ridge Track. It was a birthday present for my dad from his three sons, and the gift wasn’t so much the 55km walk, but the three days he got to spend with his three boys, uninterrupted by other demands. It’s probably the longest the four of us have spent together in, well, years, maybe even a decade. And it was great. We had the combined physical challenge of getting up the Hump, as well as time to chew the fat and talk rubbish.

You can’t buy those memories. You have to find the time to create them.