Inside Motherhood

Link out - Make time for your child

by Sherry on May 19th, 2008

I read this list of ten ways to make time for your child today. It includes some fairly obvious tips like having a planned family meal time and being involved in their activities or school. It also includes some less obvious ones like seeing if you can take your child with you on a business trip.

Mostly though, I initially thought, “who really needs a set list of how to make time to spend with your own child?!”

But after some thinking I realized we probably all do. Maybe there are some more perfected parents than myself who really do have a huge amount of quality time spent one on one with each child and life is pretty much The Sound of Music 24 hours a day.

In reality though, it can be easy to slip through the day with “hang on a second” and “shhh, just let me hear the news” and “no, I have to work now, I can’t play”. Individually they’re not so bad, but it can add up quickly and next thing you know you spent more time brushing them off than enjoying time with them.

In our home, we almost always have supper together, it’s very rare that we don’t. Breakfast is more scattered but we usually have breakfast together once on the weekend. I work from home so it’s really easy to get caught up in “work, work, work” because work is just always there, so I make a conscious effort to do it in blocks of time and walking away from it for park time with the kids, a board game, or just horsing around. We attend the soccer games and this week I’m helping out at the school when the class goes to visit the local fire station. I try and so does my husband.

But it was still worth reading the list as a reminder and refresher.

How’s your balance with your kids?

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