Do You Spend Quality Time With Your Kids?
I was doing my meditation practice this morning, and my mind was a busy bee. I would manage a few blank seconds, then my mind would drift again. I’ve sharpened my awareness over the last few years of dedicated practice, so I notice within a few seconds when my thoughts float off. And I’m usually good at gently pulling it back to a quiet, blank space.
Not this morning! With a ton of workshop proposals, prep for an upcoming lifeguard training, detailed planning for the launch of a new TOG platform (watch for a surprise), packing for a summer vacation with the family (yay!), and entertaining favorite cousins from India, my mind had no shortage of places to drift to.
That continued after my meditation, too. As I jumped on the treadmill to exercise, I noticed my mind wasn’t in sync with my physical movements. And when I hopped into the shower, my mind kept flowing elsewhere. I barely noticed breakfast as I thought about worksheets for the lifeguard program. And when I looked at my watch, I couldn’t believe it was time for my parent consultation. I shouldn’t have been surprised when the first thing the mom said to me was this:
“You were right. I do have trouble being present with my kids. The mind-watch assignment you gave me on Monday was maddening. I tried taking five minutes of quiet time and watching my breath. That was hard, but I could catch moments of blankness, and I know how relaxing that feels. I could watch my mind throughout the day as well. I noticed I was doing laundry but thinking about dinner. And when I was making dinner, I was thinking about my grocery list. As I made my grocery list, my mind drifted off to what I needed to buy my nephew for his birthday. I could actually observe all that and really worked on bringing my attention to the task I had started. I aligned my attention and my action—as you suggested—as best I could. I might not have been successful every time, but I definitely got what you were pointing to. It’s crazy that we do all these things with our body while our attention moves elsewhere once we’ve started a task. But that was not the maddening part.
“The minute I headed to school to pick up the kids, my mind seemed to pick up the speed of an express train. I no longer was noticing the way my mind was floating. There was no noticing anything anymore. It was 7 p.m. before I realized that I hadn’t noticed anything for four straight hours! When I reflected back, I realized that the only moment that I was really present was when my kids got into the car after school. The minute the door shut, I remember looking back, smiling, and asking the kids how their day was. At that moment my mind was with my body. After that, I really don’t know.
“Yesterday, I made a concerted effort to watch my mind while I was with the kids, and, honestly, I couldn’t. One minute they were fighting, the next I was screaming to get homework started, and the moment after that I was screaming that it was bath time. Then we had dinner. I remember what I did, but I do not remember what each task felt like.”
This is what we all confront in our daily lives. It is simply the nature of the mind to float on to the next moment before the current one is over. Most of the time we are not really “present” in what we do. Even when we are eating, we are often glued to our phones or our mind is elsewhere. Yet this multitasking, as we call it, does not, repeat does not make us more efficient. It’s not beneficial to the well-being of our physical bodies because our physical bodies cannot keep up with the speed of our minds. Research tells us that multitasking is not a healthy habit. It induces stress, anxiety, and depression. Worst of all, it is detrimental to our relationship with our kids.
The word “quality” is defined as “the degree of excellence of something.” It points to the experience we have when we are with our kids. There is no excellence or experience when we do not align our mind with the task at hand. This doesn’t mean that we should not do the things that we need to do for our kids or with our kids. It simply means that the quality of the time spent with our kids is determined by the state of mind we are in at that moment.
So how can you harness this? By working on clearing your mind of other things while you address the task at hand. Only then will we find a deeper connection with our kids. We will find the “quality” in even the smallest of quantity of time we spend with them. This is why I advocate the tool Take 5 from my award-winning book, The “Perfect” Parent. Unless we practice Take 5, we cannot dial into the feeling of sharing space with our kids without a to-do list in our minds. With summer around the corner, take five minutes each day to work on this. I promise you, a little practice will take carry you through a lifetime of great relationships.
When all is said and done, our kids will remember less of what we did for them and more the quality time we spent with them. We cannot and should not spend a lifetime raising our kids without experiencing what quality time actually feels like. Because it is within this feeling that we find the joy, the love, the memories, and everything else that we are yearning for in our parenting experience. It is within this feeling that we find quality in our relationship with our kids—and all of life itself.
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The post Do You Spend Quality Time With Your Kids? appeared first on Tools of Growth.
