Do You Schedule Quality Time With Your Kids? What Does It Look Like?
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What do you do for quality time with your kids? Do you schedule quality time with your kids, and if so, what does your scheduled time look like? A mom/son breakfast? A special dessert that you two bake together? Something more active? Do you schedule quality time in response to something (for example, business travel) or do you have it automatically built into your schedule?
It’s been ages since we’ve discussed how to find quality time with your kids as a working mom (or, oof, this other discussion prompted by someone saying the time spent with her kids was “the best 15 minutes of her day”) — so let’s get into it!
Harry is getting old enough now (and we finally finished weaning) that I’d like to set up “parent dates” on the weekend where we each have dedicated one-on-one time with each boy.
{related: our best tips to spend more quality time with your kids}
It seemed like when the kids were younger, quality time was easier to come by, and easier to sate, if that makes sense — for my eldest, we had regular snuggles at bedtime and whenever we read books.
If I or his father went away for business, a special present or treat would immediately make him feel loved, and if ice cream was involved, forget about it.
Then his brother came, and the bedtime/reading snuggles got cut in half, basically — and now even those limited automatic snuggles are going away as, almost 8, he starts to prefer to read his own books or gets “treats” like late summer movie nights.
It seems like my son and I both feel better connected if we have an occasional mom and son breakfast — nothing fancy, just a nearby diner — but I’m curious what else people like to do.
So, readers, let’s hear it — do you schedule quality time with your kids? Do you have it automated into your schedule (where, say, every third Friday of the month is mom and son breakfast), or do you have quality time as needed? What do you like to do for “quality time”?
After dinner is playtime. We set a timer and play whatever child wants until the timer goes off. Usually it is around 10 minutes. On a rushed night, it might be 5 minutes and on weekends it could be 30 minutes. It seems really important to her, and sometimes it helps hurry along other activities in the evening because I remind her that we can have a longer playtime if she moves things along.
Does grocery shopping with the kid count as quality time?
Honestly posts like this make me feel guilty, like I should be spending more “quality time” with my kids. My quality time is reading books to my kids at breakfast/dinner and then sitting outside in the backyard with them while they are playing or on their bikes while I’m reading the newspaper. We try to do fun things on the weekend like go to my parents’ house or the playground or a museum – isn’t that enough?
I have regular activities/times I spend with my kid. I make it home for dinner, and I put my phone away for dinner. And I read to my kid before bed. Of course, the schedule changes occasionally, but I try hard to make those things part of the routine.
Currently, the only other “scheduled” quality time is when we plan to attend a special event or plan a special day trip (or weekend away or vacation).
When my husband and his sister were little, their dad took them each to fancy restaurants for one-on-one time. I like the idea of each kid having one-on-one time with each parent occasionally, although I don’t necessarily think it has to be that fancy. (I remember, when my mom had to work late, my dad and I would sometimes go to a Tex-Mex restaurant she didn’t like that had really good chicken fingers.)
My husband and I would like to do marriage counseling but we just cannot reliably get to an appointment. We have a young kid, we both work a lot, he is already going to individual counseling once a week. Does anyone have a suggestion for marriage counseling via web conference or something like that? Ugh.