Not All Time is Quality Time

QUESTION OF THE WEEK

Quality Time - 

Dear Dr. Bird,

  I have two children, ages 7 and 10.  My husband and I both work and have very busy schedules.  Lately when I come home from work I find myself feeling guilty for a variety of situations in my life.  Sometimes I wish I could spend more time with my children but my schedule won’t allow it.  My problem is that I feel like I spend every free moment running them to everything from choir practice to little league.  In the process we yell at each other, get angry, and argue about nearly everything.  A friend of mine says it’s the quality of time that matters not the quantity.  I believe that, except that all of our time lately doesn’t have quality or quantity. Please help!

 Frustrated Mom

Dear Frustrated,

            The problem you are dealing with is very common in our busy culture.  Most working families are so busy that they find themselves with hardly enough time to squeeze in all of the things they want.  Aside from that however, I will give you a very important piece of advice – never compare quality and quantity.  It’s like comparing apples and oranges – you can’t do it and you shouldn’t do it.  Our children need a lot of quantity and quality.

            The other thing we have to remember is that just because it’s “time,” it doesn’t make it quality.  We have supervised time (when children are doing their thing and an adult is in charge), guidance time (where we teach them life skills – cooking, cleaning, helping with homework, etc.), and productive time (where we all work independently, laundry, yard work, etc.).  All of these may have some quality to them, but they aren’t quality time by themselves.  Quality time is face to face, “how was your day?” time.  It’s not “Did you get your homework done?  Did you clean up that room?” time.  It’s talking about things that do matter and things that don’t matter.  It’s telling the other person, “Your thoughts and feelings are important to me.”  It’s telling them, “I want to know how your day went, and I want to tell you how mine went too.”    

            Driving kids to little league and zipping through the fast food drive-up is not quality time.  At best, it’s probably supervised time.  It’s wonderful that we can make a lot of money for our kids, and give them things we never had, but in the end it will matter very little.  What will matter most is asking yourself – how do I want my children to remember me?  As a driven, gotta-go, gotta-get-there parent? Or, as one who sat down at the dinner table and talked about the silly and unimportant things?