Spending quality time with your child:

We all know how important behavior management is to raising a child. We also know how important it is to provide supervision, to encourage healthy meals, to boost the child’s self-esteem, and yadda, yadda, yadda…

What busy parents often forget about is just how valuable their time is to their child. Spending quality time together undoubtedly strengthens the relationship and builds memories that linger on for many more years. Unfortunately, many parents these days are too busy working long hours and dealing with the seemingly endless tasks and chores that tend to fill up their days.

Often, when the time is available and “quality time” is an option, many parents simply have no idea how to spend that free time with their child. Lacking any creative ideas, parents (and sometimes the children) simply resort to “watching TV” or “putting in a movie.”

With that being said, I have decided to write a list of 20 things (activities) that I enjoy doing with my kids…perhaps this will offer some ideas to parents looking for ways to spend quality time with their own children…

1. Build a fort! What child doesn’t like building forts?
2. Go for a walk.
3. Go through old photos and/or videos together.
4. Organize a neighborhood game of “kick the can” or some other fun game (invite other neighborhood kids to play).
5. Teach your child(ren) how to play a new card game…then play it.
6. Play catch at a park (or kick a ball back and forth).
7. Have a picnic.
8. Have a pillow fight!
9. Write a song or poem together.
10. Go to the library.
11. Wash the car together (believe it not, some kids really enjoy this!).
12. Go fishing.
13. Have a lemonade stand in the summer.
14. Learn then practice magic tricks together (find them on YouTube or elsewhere online).
15. Make a meal together or bake something.
16. Work on a project together (build a birdhouse, a tire swing, etc.).
17. Create a newspaper that focuses on the household…be creative.
18. Work on a craft or art project together.
19. Start a garden or plant some flowers.
20. Talk, talk, talk…

Hopefully, this list will help you come up with ways to spend quality time with your child each day. Take it one step further and “log” the activities that you do together so that you have a reminder of the good times you spent together.