Today, let’s share our best tips for how to spend more quality time with your kids — it’s always good to do, and it may be a New Year’s resolution for you as well.
What are your ways of making sure you have quality quality time with your kids as a working mom? Do you feel mom guilt about not spending “enough” time with them? Do you cope by focusing on quality over quantity?
Besides spending quality time with your kids, we’ve also talked about how to have fun with your kids when you’re the disciplinarian parent and asked readers whether they’re able to eat dinner with their kids.
In our post on how to find time for hobbies as a working mom a few years ago, we suggested some ways to involve your kid in your hobbies and interests, and more recently, we shared some board games that don’t suck.
Five Great Tips to Spend More Quality Time With Your Kids
Here are some ideas from readers from our last discussion where we asked the readers what they do for quality time with their kids:
- When they’re old enough, get your kids involved in your exercise activities (ride bikes together and so on).
- Choose one day a week to spend some one-on-one time with your child (tougher when you have multiple kids, of course!); they choose the activity. (One mom said that her husband sleeps in on Saturday mornings and she and her child go out to breakfast together.)
- Take a random vacation day or personal day once or twice a year to spend with your kids (easier to do before your kids reach school age). (The idea of allowing kids mental health days is interesting, too.)
- Try using mornings for some cuddle time with little ones, rather than evenings.
- Doing what you can — for example, making holidays really special and memorable for your kids.
How about you, readers? What are your best tips to spend more quality time with your kids? How do you resist the urge to multitask (check email, etc.) while you’re spending time with them?
Allie says
I hate the phrase “mom guilt” and think it should not be proffered as a problem to be addressed through any tips other than tips on how to smash the patriarchy.
Boston Legal Eagle says
Yes, can we please stop talking about “mom guilt” as if all working women experience it, just by nature of working? There are lots of business demands that are hard when you’re a working parent because the default “valued employee” is still childless/has a SAH spouse, but that doesn’t mean we should feel guilty for working.
I can’t imagine spending more time with my kids than I did last year. Not sure how much of it was “quality” but they seem perfectly happy and I love that they get to have experiences away from us at daycare. I aim for dinner as a family, and then the bedtime routine as our quality time where husband and I try to really focus on them.
Anonymous says
Quality time doesn’t have to be recreational. In the Before Times, Saturday errands were my quality time with my daughter. Now it’s walking the dog.
CPA Lady says
There is no such thing as hoping for quality time for me right now, and this post feels really odd to me given current circumstance for a lot of people. It kind of relates to the person who was asking about ways to be less stressed in this morning’s post– I have to let go of expectations that things will be like in the before-times so I dont explode from stress. Including all these rules and expectations I have for myself about needing to have quality time and what it’s “supposed” to look like if I’m parenting in the Morally Appropriate Way (i.e. only wooden toys and lots of fresh air)
Right now it’s just vast quantities of time together, with very little “quality” to be had. She’s an only child who has been at home since March. Husband and I both work full time from home at the current moment. We’re sick to death of each other.
That said, the best quality time I’ve had with my kid in months was playing mario kart with her on our newly acquired switch yesterday. We were both happy, having fun, and in a good mood. Is this what I expected quality to look like? Nope. But I’ll take what I can get.
avocado says
Totally agree. Pre-pandemic, I thought that once my daughter entered high school this past fall I’d basically never see her again because she would always be at school, doing homework, at sports practice, or hanging out with friends. She was planning to spend most of the summer of 2021 away from home. Thanks to COVID, we have quite a bit of time together, but we are all stressed out over remote work and on-line school and being trapped together 24/7 so it doesn’t really seem like “quality time.” I am constantly feeling guilty that every day is basically a survival crawl and I’m not giving her tons of magical memories or helping her to get ahead with academic stuff while she has the time, just like I feel guilty that I’m not getting in the best shape of my life and doing tons of projects around the house and publishing a zillion articles using all the time I’m saving by not commuting. Surviving the day without a major disaster is a big win right now. If playing Mario Kart makes everyone happy, then that’s quality time right there.
Realist says
Yes. All of this. Right down to parenting an only child at home with no help since March. I am losing my ever-loving mind. I can’t even aim for quality time anymore. Just trying to meet the bare minimum to keep us all surviving. My focus is keeping us fed, ensuring everyone has minimum emotional wellness needs met, keeping my business limping along, and trying our best to support ourselves in being kind to each other because every person is ready to lose it about once a week. I will never forgive the people responsible for this year. Just an utter failure of leadership at the top from Day 1.
SC says
So glad you had some fun together! I was an only child. I had a Super Nintendo and a GameBoy. I absolutely loved it when my dad played Mario Kart or any other video game with me. I have great memories of those times! I also have fond memories of watching “our” TV shows with my dad when I was in high school. I still play them occasionally as an adult. I’m looking forward to getting a Switch, but we’re waiting on my kid’s emotional maturity and resilience to improve. For now, Kiddo plays PBS Kids games and a few others on my iPad, and DH and Kiddo have a few games they play together.
SC says
I’m the parent that reads at bedtime, and I count that as quality time. Lots of snuggling is involved. We also insist that Kiddo join us for dinner, and we’re gradually increasing the time he has to sit at the table to 10 minutes (we’re at 6 minutes). Right now, Kiddo is really into playing independently. He asks us to stay away until he’s ready to show us what he’s built or drawn or put together. I’m not the type of parent to impose myself on his play if he’s happily entertaining himself. Over the holidays, I did help Kiddo with a massive Lego build–mostly, I sat with him while he built, but that was a lot of quality time together. I got a few hugs out of it.
anon says
Quality time has a vastly different meaning now than it did a year ago. We’re trapped in the house together all.the.time. Stuff that used to be our favorite go-to’s either a) aren’t available or appropriate right now, or b) have been done a million times since March, so much so that they don’t provide much respite to anyone. (Another bike ride! Another nature walk! Another batch of cookies baked!) I truly do not know what the answer is, but I have decided to take the expectation of providing “quality time” just cannot be on my list of things to worry about right now.
CCLA says
Agreed that this has such a different meaning now than a year ago. We used to be heavy into the errands as quality time (my now 4yo was a delightful shopping companion, whether groceries or browsing). That doesn’t happen now. I’ve had recent success for her deciding that for a set amount of time (like, 15-20 minutes), I tell her it’s just her and me and we do whatever play thing she wants. Ideally every day but let’s be honest it’s probably more like 3 days a week. There is zero direction or planning on my part…usually she wants to be Elsa and save Anna (me) from falling, and we repeat 100x, sometimes we build with magnatiles, do a puzzle, etc. Key is she decides, and it seems to fill her bucket. Also like above posters, I hate the phrase mom guilt.
Essential worker says
PSA – let’s remember that not everyone works from home even now…
As a long-hours-away-from-home worker, I had a real triumph in this area last year:
**I taught my spouse to do the morning chores**
So, in the 30 mins after our toddlers wake up before I leave the house, instead of making our coffees, unloading the dishwasher, etc, I’m cuddling with my kids while he does the housework. He then has another hour with them before his workday starts, so we both get the QT we crave.