The "Good old days"....

Do me a favor.

No, do yourself a favor.

No, do your family a favor.

Spend more time with your kids.

We all have so much going on in our lives that demand our time.  Each and every one of these items can be considered important.  We have to work to pay our bills and support our family and lifestyle.  We have to interact with our friends to keep us sane!  We have to... and we have to...  By the time we get through with all our "have tos", there just isn't much time left in a day.

At some point in my life I started to here the term "quality time."  Not sure where that came from but it was always used in the context of justification for the limited time we spent with our children.  We were lead to believe that a smaller portion of focused "quality time" more than replaced an abundance of "regular" time.

I have absolutely no formal training in psychology or any of those fancy behavioral sciences, only the experience actually being a parent.  That experience has led me to these beliefs:

1. The time that a parent chooses to be "quality time" will almost without exception be exactly the time your child would rather spend with friends or doing something else.  Say goodbye to quality time.
2. Children will learn very fast what you value in your life based upon how you spend your time.  They see where your efforts are made, where your priorities are.
3. There is ZERO chance that when your children are grown and leave the house, that you will say "Man, I wish I had spent less time with the kids when they were here."  In fact, I'd be surprised if you didn't say the opposite at some point.

I know that I wasn't (and still am not) a perfect parent.  Many bad decisions were made by me while raising my children.  However, every single time I skipped out on an afternoon of work to pick the kids up from school, every time I took them to a late movie on a school night when Jacqui was out of town, every time I stopped what I was doing and paid attention to them was the right thing to do.

Do your family a favor and spend more time with your children.  You will never regret it.

I promise.

Cheers.