New Year Resolution - Make Time for Your Kids

 

           New Year Resolution - Make Time for Your Kids

Let us celebrate 2021 with some positivity, high hopes, and the desire to make the world a better place!  This means to set some amazing resolutions starting at home and with our family.

 

So choose one thing that is the MOST important to you in the coming year. Are you hoping to get healthy? Do you need to develop a better self-care routine? Maybe you want to spend more time with your kids.

 

Research has shown that the type of time spent with children is positively related to children's educational and cognitive outcomes. Car pools, lunch bags, after-school activities, dinner, homework, bath time, bedtime. All of these over and above own job and the other realities of adulthood. You have just enough energy left to drag yourself to bed so you can wake early and start the same routine all over again. Each day with young kids feels like a week, each week like a month.

Yet as every birthday passes, the years seem to be streaking by at warp speed. Five-month-olds become 5-year-olds in the blink of an eye, and then 15-year-olds. This inexorable march of time that turns babies into big kids is the "other" biological clock facing young couples. Every day brings new growth, new milestones, and new wonderment, but the challenges of juggling our adult lives often prevent us from fully appreciating the delicate nuances of childhood.

We have heard about slow parenting, attachment parenting and tiger moms. However, over my past 30 years of experience, I have learned that there is a single truth that applies to any parenting philosophy: Your children need to spend meaningful time with you. They need to see who you are and how you live your life. And in return, they will help you to better see who you are.

When you add up all the time your kids spend at day care, in school, asleep, at friends’ homes, with babysitters, at camp, and otherwise occupied with activities that don't include you, the remaining moments become especially precious. There are only 940 Saturdays between a child's birth and her leaving for college. That may sound like a lot, but how many have you already used up? If your child is 5 years old, 260 Saturdays are gone.  And the older your kids get, the busier their Saturdays are with friends and activities. Ditto Sundays. And what about weekdays? Depending on your children's age and whether you work outside the home, there may be as few as one or two hours a day during the week for you to spend with them.

However, instead of worrying about how many minutes you can spend with your children each day, focus on turning those minutes into memorable moments. Parents often compensate for having such a small quantity of time by scheduling "quality time." Two hours at the nature preserve. An afternoon at the movies. Dinner at a restaurant. But the truth is that quality time may occur when you least expect it—yes, at the nature preserve, but also in the car on the way to school or a leisure stroll or listening to them without agenda.

It is often difficult for parents and kids to get together for a family meal, let alone spend quality time together. But there is probably nothing kids would like more. Get up 10 minutes earlier in the morning so you can eat breakfast with your child or leave the other priorities aside and take a walk after dinner. Kids who are not getting the attention they want from their parents often act out or misbehave because they are sure to be noticed that way.

Although I don't know how to slow down time, I do have some ideas about how to optimize the time you spend with your kids—while they are still tucked into their beds, where you can peek at them before you go to sleep.

Adolescents seem to need less undivided attention from their parents than younger kids. Because there are fewer windows of opportunity for parents and teens to get together, parents should do their best to be available when their teen does express a desire to talk or participate in family activities. Attending concerts, games, and other events with your teen communicates caring and lets you get to know more about your child and his or her friends in important ways.

Not every day with your kids will be perfect, but hopefully one day you will greet their departure with a profound sense of satisfaction because you have given them what they need to succeed and also given yourself what you need to feel like a successful parent.

        By

Dr. Mona Shah

Occupational Therapist, Clinical Psychologist