Like most parents, when we had our children we found we were dealing with time consuming tasks like meal preparations, washing piles of laundry, doing school homework, trips to the store, searching for shoes, and many, many out-of-home activities. Our jobs differed, but many times, we found that we sometimes had to work overtime and on the weekends.  It was easy to get bogged down by daily tasks.

Our “to do” list kept growing and growing as our children grew. As a result, we had to re-think how to find ways to spend time with our children. We were aware that spending time with kids had an impact on whether our parent-child relationships would end up being positive, negative or neutral. Knowing this, we did find more time to spend with our kids and learned that there is a difference between quantity and quality time. We found that:

• “Quantity time refers to the amount of time a parent is physically present with their child. For instance, examples of quantity time would be when a parent watches Oprah or Dr. Phil while their child plays on the carpet beside them, or a parent cooking dinner while the child does homework.”¹⁹ Quantity time is when a parent is physically present with their child but not engaged mentally with the child.
• “Quality time refers to the standard or caliber of the time we spend with our kids. It means we are focused, intentional and engaged with our child. Our attention is directed at our child and what they are doing. It makes more sense that one hour of quality time is better for a child than four hours of watching Oprah quantity time.“¹⁹

The definitions noted above clarify the differences between quality and quantity time but the next question is: how does spending quality time with our children impact the child? We found an answer to our question in the following article.

What Are the Benefits of Spending Quality Time with Your Kids?    by Catherine Jones

Quality time means we are “focused, intentional and engaged” when we spend time together.   That means not checking our email on our phone or letting our children play on theirs.  Quality time can be spent doing something our kids love like playing together in the backyard or setting up a favorite board game on a rainy afternoon.  Even something as simple as sitting down together as a family to eat dinner is important time spent with our kids.  Spending time with our younger kids before bed, reading a story or talking about their day at school, is also time well spent.”

The following information has been taken from Jones’ article.   

The benefits of quality time:

“Quality time together tells our children that we care about them, and has also proven to be beneficial to kids’ development and their happiness. Here are three amazing benefits that we can ‘magically’ achieve by just spending reoccurring, scheduled, one-on-one time with the kids.’

1. Fewer Behavior Issues: Children who spend quality time with their parents are less likely to have behavior issues within the family and at school.  We will probably have fewer arguments and family fights will be less severe if they feel that they are loved and respected members of the family.  Happy, well-loved, and well-adjusted kids are also less likely to have problems at school in terms of disobedience.  Kids are also statistically less likely to engage in risky behavior, including drug use, when they spend quality time with their families.

2. Mental and Emotional Health: “Kids need to feel loved and cared for.  Parents need to be truly present in their children’s lives and the best way to do this is to spend time with them on a regular basis.  It’s not enough to only be there for important occasions or crises; children need love and attention on a regular basis to become mentally and emotionally strong individuals.  Kids learn how to interact with others based on what they see at home.  It’s crucial to not only tell our kids we love them, but to actually show that we do.  The easiest way to do this is to spend quality time together as a family.” 

3. Physical Health: “Studies have shown that spending time with our kids can actually improve their physical health as well.  A study published in the Pediatrics Journal concluded that poor quality mother-and-child relationships early in life, for example the mother not comforting the baby enough, resulted in a 2.45 times higher risk of obesity for the child.” 

“Overall, quality time spent doing something the whole family enjoys is much better than quantity time spent together where we don’t really interact with each other.  It is up to us to help our children grow into well-adjusted individuals, and it’s as easy as spending some quality time together.” ²¹

Do you want to learn more about Quality Time? If so google:

Videos: “Parents spending quality time with their kids” then select your choices.

Articles: “Parents spending quality time with their kids” then select your choices.