How much quality time do you spend with your kids in a day? An hour? A couple of hours? Don’t know how much? Let’s see how important it is to spend quality time with kids.
Busy Lives and its Impact
In today’s fast-paced world, we all lead busy lives with hectic schedules. We wake up in the morning, get ready, head to work, spend the entire day at the workplace, and return home in the evening, often tired and completely exhausted. Our mealtimes are hurried, and we may turn to screens in an attempt to relieve stress before bedtime. Unfortunately, for many of us, there’s often insufficient time left for our kids.
The time we manage to spend with our children may not always qualify as quality time. This has significant consequences, including:
- Unfulfilled basic needs of our children.
- The potential development of severe psychological issues in them.
- A lack of the emotional depth and sweetness that should characterize the parent-child relationship.
According to neurologists, these effects can be irreversible.
Who’s Suffering?
Children grow up. Parents get old and get retired. The children, now grown, may show very little or no interest in their parents’ problems and needs.
At this stage, parents need companionship of their children and want to spend time with them. But the children are preoccupied with much more “important” matters. Years ago, it was the children who wanted to spend time with their parents. They had a lot to share with their mom and dad. But they were busy struggling day and night for the future of their kids. They used to think that having dinner and watching movies together means they’re spending quality time with their kids. And providing an iPad meant nearly all the needs of the child are fulfilled.
But the children needed something else. They needed quality time from their parents. They needed someone who would truly listen to them, focusing on their agenda, not just a hurried conversation.
Now, the cycle repeats itself. Parents drop their children off at daycare centers, and eventually, those grown children find themselves placing their parents in nursing homes.
Giving our time or taking their time?
Let’s consider a scenario: John meets a doctor at a party and begins asking various health-related questions. The doctor takes the time to answer all of John’s questions. In this situation, who is giving their time, and who is taking the other person’s time?
Clearly, it’s the doctor who is giving his time because he’s providing information that John is interested in gathering.
Conversations like these are commonplace in many households:
- “Come here! Tell me how you did on your Mathematics test?”
- “Why were you so late yesterday?”
- “You need to reduce your screen time”
We gather information of our interest, and we believe that we are generously offering our “precious time” to our children.
The 3 Indicators of Quality Time
1. Child’s Agenda
Many parents talk to their kids regarding their activities, grades, and performance. What would have been the impact on parent-child relation if the parents talk to their kids, and the topics are of kids’ choice? Quality time should revolve around the child’s agenda or, at the very least, topics that both parent and child agree upon.
2. Absence of Urgency
Imagine a scenario where a child wants to discuss something with their dad. But the dad has to leave home for an important meeting in 15 minutes. What should the dad do in such a situation?
Should he rush the conversation saying, “Okay! Start and be quick, I’ve to leave in 15 minutes.”
Or Should he say, “Sure, sweetheart! We’ve a full 15 minutes now, and we’ll have more time when I return.”
3. Desire of Reunion
Time spent together should enhance the parent-child relationship and foster love in both hearts. In such a case, the child will become more and more comfortable with parents and will have urge to meet them again.
In many cases, when parents say, “I’ve to go somewhere now. See you tomorrow.” The child secretly wishes that tomorrow never arrives.
Conclusion
In the pre-industrialized world, people lived happily, experiencing less psychological issues and possessing emotional strength. They used to live in close-knit families where everybody cared for their loved ones. There were less psychological and health issues. In today’s developed world we need to identify the rootcause of our problems.
A child when enters the world, observes and feels the things, they have a lot to discuss and share. They posess social, emotional and psychological needs, which, if left unfulfilled, result in irreversible loss, not only for that individual but for the humanity as a whole.
