Making time for family will bring more joy to your life and to the lives of those you love.
Making Time for Family: 5 Simple Ways to Make Time for the People You Love
Making time for family is so important!
When you have a new baby, you can’t imagine not fulfilling his or her every need. You want to spend time with him; you want to witness every new accomplishment she makes as she grows. Being a part of the life of your child is so amazing! It is a great gift.
As your child grows and becomes more independent, it can be bittersweet: you are glad for her independence, yet you miss being more involved in her life. Guess what? She still needs you. She may, in fact, need you even more now that shew is growing older.
Besides taking care of the physical needs of your children, as a mom, you can help your kids learn to navigate with faith in the world and become the person whom God has created them to be.
Making time for your kids is the way you can do this. Are you wondering how to make time for family or how to spend quality time with your child, especially when you have more than one? Here are five tips to help you make time for your family.
1. Schedule time together.
Scheduling quality time is not necessarily possible, but quality time together cannot happen if you do not spend time together at all. Plan a fun family date night, a one on one kid date night with each of your kids, work on chores together, or take one child with you to run errands.
Having time one on one can provide the opportunity for you two to talk, even if it is only about how cool the cloud formations are that day or what your favorite dinners are. You are spending time together and that is important.
When you spend time with your kids, you get to know them better and they get to know you better. When an important issue comes up, it will then be easier to talk together about it. Spending time together helps keep those lines of communication open between you.
Also, quality time is often born out to the quantity of time we are able to spend together. Conversations can get to deeper issues more quickly and you can get to the heart of a matter more easily since you are laying the foundation of a good relationship with your child.
2. Learn to say yes.
How many times do you say no when your child asks you to play with him or to take her to the park? You already had your day lined up and a lot on your to-do list! You may feel a tug-of-war playing out inside of yourself, wanting to say yes, but also wanting to say no.
If you have found yourself saying no a lot lately to reasonable requests, say yes to one. You don't have to drop everything and do it right at that moment, but you can say yes and schedule it soon to follow through.
If your kids ask you to play a board game, read a story, take a walk, or toss the ball around outside, think about saying yes instead of no.
If you are working on something when they ask you, you can also ask your kids to help you finish a task so you can spend time together sooner.
3. Look them in the eye.
When your children or spouse is talking with you: look them in the eye. This shows that you care more about them than what you were doing and it shows that you are paying attention to them. It also helps you to pay more attention to what they have to say.
If you are in the middle of something and can't look them in the eye, ask them to wait just a minute so you can pause what you are doing so you can then give them your full attention.
Just this simple act of looking them in the eye and focusing on them when they are talking with you makes a big difference in how they perceive your love for them.
Would you like it if every time you and your daughter spoke to each other she was doing something else and never looked at you? Probably not!
4. Sit down together.
This goes right along with number three. When you sit down to talk rather than talk while you are doing something else, you focus more on each other.
When you can, invite one of your children to sit down with you to talk, play a game, or read. It will give you focused time together.
5. Take advantage of opportunities.
It can be rare, but do you ever have a moment when you are between tasks and wonder what to do next? Ask one or all of your kids if they want to do something. Take this unexpected time as a gift to spend with your kids. (Beware that if they are in the middle of something, they might say no. But you asked, so they know you are interested in spending time with them.)
If you are out with one of your kids, take the time to get to know them better instead of merely doing the errand or task at hand. Share a story about yourself. Sometimes your kids forget that you were once a kid, too. When you share more of yourself with them, they see you in a different light and may open up more to you.
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Resources to help you in making time for your family even better.
Do you feel like you don't know your kids very well or wonder how to approach spending time with them? The books The 5 Love Languages of Children: The Secret to Loving Children Effectively by Gary Chapman and Ross Campbell and The 5 Love Languages of Teenagers: The Secret to Loving Teens Effectively by Gary Chapman are very helpful. (If you want to get both of them, they are sold as a set for a reduced price: The 5 Love Languages of Children/The 5 Love Languages of Teenagers Set.)
The books talk about what the primary love languages are, how to identify which ones are strongest in your children (and in yourself), and how to communicate well with your children based on their love languages. For example, if your child's main love language is words of affirmation (meaning they like to hear how much you love them and how well they are doing) yet you want to give them a big hug (the love language of physical touch), they may not read your hug as love.
When you know your children's primary love languages, you can know how to communicate love to them in a way that they hear and understand love.
The books describe the love languages very well and give many helpful examples. They are a great resource for parents to understand their children better and to understand each other better as well in their marriage relationship.
Making Time for Family: 5 Simple Ways to Make Time for the People You Love
In addition to scheduling time to spend with your family, you can say yes when your kids ask to do something together, look them in the eye when you are talking together, sit down together to talk or play a game, and take advantage of opportunities that come up.
Making time for family is as much your mindset and intention as it is the actual time you spend together. Focus your attention on your children when you spend time with them instead of thinking of the other things that you need to do. Ask questions and share about yourself: get to know each other and you will both grow in love and appreciation for each other.
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