Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Quality Time

I follow a blog called Serenity Now!  Today Amanda had a very encouraging blog on spending time with your kids and family.  If you have about 5 minutes please click on the link and read it.  I found it very encouraging!
We are a home-schooling family and spend almost all of our time with, or around, all children.  However, it does not always translate into quality time with our kids.  I love being a stay-at-home mother, but I too have to work at spending quality time with our kids.  My husband and I have found a few easy ways to do this.  One is our meal time.  I cook almost every night for dinner and we usually eat all 3 meals at home.  We eat at our table (except on fun nights).  Together we make an effort to actually converse with our kids while we are eating.  My husband usually asks what they learned in school and he actively tries to remember what we are studying and reading and he asks specific questions about that.  We let them lead the conversation and talk about what they are into....which can quite honestly be pretty boring.  They talk about what the cat did or what cake they want for their birthday in 2 years, but it is rewarding and hopefully we are instilling some family values during these moments.  Another thing I do is not feel guilty if I want to sit and watch them play.  When they are outside they ALWAYS want me to come watch.  It is amazingly easy to say "No, Mommy has laundry and mopping."  But I try to say "yes" as often as I can.  The other day I spent over 2 hours just watching them play, helping them with the sprinkler, getting popsicles and cheering for them when they did tricks and stuff.  I had a great time and they were so much to play with!
Anyways, I wondered what others do to create those special moments, not just with your kids, but for your whole family?  Please share your thoughts!

4 comments:

Belinda said...

Funny you should post this because I was just thinking about how I want to spend more quality time with the boys. Like you said, it's so easy to say "not now" or "just a minute". My mother in law brought me a bunch of old Family Fun mags and I went through them and tore out some neat activities and crafts to do with the boys. One of them is making 4th of July shirts. Easy and cheap and I know they will love it :)

Amanda @ Serenity Now said...

Hi there! First of all, thank you so much for the linky love. :) I'm so glad someone enjoyed the post! It IS so easy to get caught up in house stuff, blog stuff, etc. and I am also making an effort to enjoy my girls more. :)

Clifford Jeffery said...

You are so welcome Amanda! Enjoy your sweet girls!!

Anonymous said...

I really enjoyed this post, especially the “examples in this post” portion which made it really easy for me to SEE what you were talking about without even having to leave the article. Thanks