Quantity v. Quality Time

A quick lesson on quantity and quality time...especially as it relates to kids. A friend actually told me this a few years ago, and recently I've really seen it played out in my family.

She said that with kids, quality time comes within quantity time. We want to have quality time with our kids, so we try to create a situation that we think will bring this. We'll grab one of the three kids once every in awhile and run up to the ice cream joint, stare them in the eyes, and hope they really want to open up and bond. "So what's going on in your life?" They respond with "I sure do like chocolate." "No, like REALLY..what are your hopes and dreams?" "Can I have another scoop?"

With kids, you have to spend a large amount of time with them to hopefully get a few minutes of what you think is quality time.

Our Thanksgiving break was so great and just what our family needed. Finding family time has been hard this year...Mark is a new business owner, we added a baby to the family, Annika started kindergarten, etc.. Taylor has been having a hard year...school is harder, attitudes have been uncontrollable. During the break, Taylor went outside with Mark to work on Christmas lights, while Annika declared "I'm an inside helper."

So Taylor was outside with Mark for hours and hours...quantity time. And during that time, he said she just started talking. She talked about feeling like a slow poke, and some stuff about school, and just random things that she's never talked about before. It was a quality conversation that came within a large quantity of time.

You see how this works? If you only have a few minutes of down time with your kids each day, that time slot is not necessarily going to be the time they want to talk to you. If you have larger blocks of time with them, within that large block of time, you'll hopefully get some good conversations.

I know that it's easier said than done. Husbands work, kids go to school, moms cook and do laundry. But don't be afraid to simply BE with your kids. "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."