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Quality time has real impact on teens
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Published: April 9, 2009
When I wore a younger man's clothes, I did a lot of work with youth. I spent many a night in camp and retreat settings, trying to get kids to follow the adult guidelines and expectations for bedtime.
It didn't take me long to realize I had much more success managing teens when I had a relationship with them. That is why we insisted that adults from their home congregation come with the kids and act as advisors in the dorms and cabins. There were times, when the ratio of male and female advisors were not even and I would end up with youth from other congregations. Consistently, I was able to get youth from my home church to cooperate, but youth from other churches were hard to manage. The relationship or absence of a relationship was the major variable.
I started to thinking about applying this learning to parenting issues. For years in my parenting classes, I listened to parents complain about being unable to win cooperation from their children. After a while, I would send them home with a homework assignment to keep account of how much time they spent with each child. I immediately began to notice the parents who lamented the most were the parents who spent little quality time with their children.
Some research verifies the reality that parents spend only minutes a day with their children, especially as they get older. (Some fathers go for days without seeing their children). Most of the actual time is not quality time, but time when a child was being punished or prodded to do domestic tasks or homework.
When you have a close and respectful relationship with your children, you become a valued and significant person to your children. You actually get to know your children as a person and they get to know you. As a significant person in your child's life, a child will listen and respect what you say. If you become an insignificant person in their life because you are too busy to develop a parent/child bond, the children will be less likely to listen to you and follow your guidance.
Parents who have trouble gaining respect and getting children to follow rules think that if they had some tried and true parenting techniques, they could be more successful as parents. There is no magical technique for raising children. Some skills, such as communication and problem solving, can help, but if you don't have a positive relationship with you children, even these will be ineffective. That is why I prefer "relational parenting" as the best model for raising reasonably happy and healthy children.
I encourage parents to spend some one-on-one time with each child several times a week. This time can be playtime, hanging out or working on a task together. Sometimes, it can be "Let's talk time," when there is something you want to say to a child, but never get around to it because of your schedule or your child's schedule. As the parent, you can make this happen. It is the responsibility of the parent to create time blocks with your children. It has to be intentional, because it seldom "just happens."
When you create special time with a child, the child knows you care about her/him and that they are a priority in your life and not an afterthought. Positive quality time with a child will minimize and reduce the amount of negative time (dealing with problems) you spend with a child. Relational parenting prevents problems between you and your children. Preventing problems actually takes less time than solving problems with children. It is also a lot more pleasant.
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