Skip to Content

The importance of spending quality time with your kids

Spend time with your kids: reading to them is a great activity
Spend time with your kids: reading to them is a great activity

This is our regular Tuesday Tips for Parenting guest post by Beckie Whitehouse from Be Confident Coaching.

Its not hard to do; spend time with your kids. Spending quality time with your kids can be the best reward for them, and for you as well.

Yesterday our oldest returned from a weekend at cub camp. He had a fab time climbing, abseiling and going to bed late under canvas. I was expecting a tired grumpy boy and a fairly hard evening but to my delight he was a joy to have home. He liked talking about his exploits and what they had eaten- always a highlight for him ever since he started school and I would say what was the best thing about today and the reply was pretty much always – lunch.

Anyway….

After a bath we sat and watched Dr Who which is something we have just started to do together. It’s great, I really enjoy it, he is such an outside boy and as his Dad loves footy and helps with his team, I kind of leave that to them. It’s a very special time, just him and me circled up on the sofa, his brother and sister in bed.

Although last night we were interrupted by his sister a couple of times, but she has her other times with me. I tend to take her to her swimming lessons so have a chance of one to one time then.

Watching TV or playing on the Wii is great but it doesn’t leave much room for conversation so it’s good to do other things. I will take any of them when I take the dog for a walk and have found this is a great time for the more difficult things to be talked through or when the kids want to get something off their chests.

Spend time with your kids: father and child having fun
Spend time with your kids: father and child having fun

Focus on activities that make it easy to chat

Other activities which leave a bit of space for chatting are doing a puzzle, some gardening or playing a game (one where you don’t need to concentrate too hard). Not as I attempted last week, trying to play chess and answer one of the others questions – a disaster for me, but an utter triumph for my opponent; check mate within ten minutes!

The new challenge I can see is for the youngest (who is doing his first full day of school today). We were very used to time together when the others were at school, but now he’s there we will have to find a special time for just us.

This time is so important for them – time to be with a parent with no rivalry from other siblings. It shows them how important they are. We don’t have to do anything amazing (although sometimes it’s fun to do that) colouring together, reading a book, listening to them do their music practise; anything really.

It’s when you can set aside time to give to your children your undivided attention, when you stop in your busy lives to spend time with your kids; that’s when they feel special and loved.

How do you make time to spend quality time with your kids? Is it harder when you have more than one? How have you overcome this? Let us know in the comment or visit us on Facebook!

Check out these other parenting posts from Kiddy Charts and beyond.

If you found this post helpful do sign up for our newsletter for more parenting tips.

Beckie is a mum to three kids, and works in the Cambridge area as a coach. Feel free to get in contact for a no obligation discussion.

Sharing is caring!

Katie Bell

Saturday 20th of September 2014

Nice to hear about it! Nowadays as the technology taking us forward, kids are oversmart in bidding good bye and enjoy themselves with friends and surrounding. I myself feel detached with my kid and worried that he's unlike when he's small.

Linda Hobbis

Tuesday 24th of September 2013

This is so true. I'm vowing to make sure I have some special time with my daughter who is 5 as her 4 year old younger brother tends to monopolise attention and she loves to play with my makeup and jewellery with me when he's not about.

Elinor

Tuesday 18th of September 2012

So so true Beckie and it doesn't have to be for great long chunks of time either does it. I have absolutely loved going to the cinema with my son. It was our thing - loved it. I had to bite back the tears recently when he very gently explained that he wanted to just go with his mates. Even when I said, with a rather wobbly chin, how about if we could sneak in when it was dark?- he still sadly shook his head at me and sighed. He let me down gently though and said 'Mum we still have Lovefilm'. Thank goodness, he will still curl up on the sofa with me! I don't know who the teenage years are more painful for - me or him.

Beckie Whitehouse

Wednesday 19th of September 2012

Oh Elinor poor you and I feel those teenage years rushing up to us ,...I only get a bye Mum in the playground now...unless I catch him!

Comments are closed.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.