While watching a large family being interviewed by skeptics on national television, one of the pointed questions directed to the mom of the family was, “with having so many children, how do you find time to spend quality time with each one?” To this day I still remember her answer. Without hesitation she smiled and said, “we homeschool.” She then went on to explain that this could clearly be a problem for families who send their kids outside of the home from school because they do not see them for a majority of the day. Then, when they come home, the time is limited before the kids are off to bed. With homeschooling though, there is plenty of time to spend with each and every child. I loved this response and it has stuck with me over the years. I love it because it is true. While critics might say to us, “how can you spend every waking hour with your kids??” We can ask, “how can you afford not to?” Of course, I am not saying there’s anything wrong with a date night or mom’s night out once in a while but in all reality, the majority of your time is with your kids, so why not make the most of it?
The best way to make sure that each and every child in your family gets quality time with you, whether you have three or thirteen, is to be intentional about it. Make it clear to the other siblings when you are spending time with a particular child. Make it special. Ask your daughter if she wants to learn the secret to your famous casserole that you bring to church events. Invite your tween son into the kitchen with you while you prepare a Sunday meal.
I approach it in two ways. The first is like what I said above where I look for opportunities throughout the day to invite a child to join me with what I am doing. The second is in the homeschooling realm. Since we do what I call, “table time,” in the morning where all of the children learn together, I then reserve the afternoon for the kids, separately. I give each of my older kids a full hour (is that crazy or what?) I tell them, that they each get an hour of my full attention where we will do school together just me and them. This is where I teach them math, spelling, reading, English or other grade-specific subjects. Of course, it never lasts a full hour, just until the work they need help with is done, but it puts their minds at ease knowing that I am there and willing to be with them and only them for a portion of the day. This works much better than me trying to help them all at the same time and it allows me to relax and enjoy being with each one. As for my younger ones, I use bath time and reading to them at bedtime as a time to spend one-on-one time with them. It is special for them and helps them to get a better night’s sleep as well.
Even though we school year-round I do take some breaks during the year. This past Christmas was no exception. My older kids all received fun games and crafts for Christmas and were all begging for me to play with them. Rather than just saying, “yes,” at every whim, I told each child they would each get thirty minutes with me to play with any Christmas gift they wanted. We did this two days of the break and I could tell it meant the world to them. They seemed peaceful since they knew that when their time came, they would have mom’s full attention to do what they wanted to do. I spent these days playing chess, dominos and sewing cute little horse crafts. We had a blast.
Of course, when dad came home that night, they were all asking him to play with them, one-on-one as well. He willingly gave in and found himself eating jelly beans that tasted like rotten eggs and stinks bugs, but, that’s another story!
