Virtually every little child loves to spend time with his parents, wants to play with them, watch a cartoon with them on the TV, eat, sleep and read books together… But unfortunately, as modern parents, we usually don’t have too much time for it. So it’s important that the moments we do spend with our children, is in fact considered quality time. Only this way can we strengthen our parent-child bond which is so important for mutual trust, respect and love.
Below you’ll find some basic ideas to spend a truly nice afternoon with your own kid away from a computer and TV. Without need to travel far away, spend a lot of money or any other great effort. What is needed here is just your goodwill and some of your time.
- Play together
But if you think about computer games or PlayStation then stop right away! That’s too absorbing to call it truly quality time. So when we say “play” you should rather think more about a sport or classic outdoor & indoor games.
Most of the children love to play such games but the problem is that in modern times, not all of them know the rules of “Hide & seek” for example. So teach them! It’s a really great opportunity to exercise your bodies, brains and have some laugh together. Just take a ball and go outside to play a football game. One on one will do. Bad weather? It’s also not a big deal. You can play many games indoors. For example “Hide & seek” mentioned above. Just use your imagination and pick games which will be interesting for all of you. It’s also a good idea to invite your neighbor and his kids to play together. The more participants the better! But just two of you is also fine.
- Coloring pages
Your kid isn’t a very sporty type? Well, that’s really not a big problem. Of course, you shouldn’t force him to do what he doesn’t like in his free time. There are several other ideas to spend this time together in a nice way. One of them is trying coloring pages. This is one of the classic forms of entertainment for children, which bravely resists the passing of time. And its advantages are numerous. Coloring is very cheap, doesn’t require any special skills or equipment. It’s also easy to start and most of the children just love it. The first step should be finding several coloring pages that really suits your child. There’s a lot of free coloring books on the internet. Then you can color pictures together or separately but be close to each other and talk. Mute your mobile phone. You don’t want to disrupt this rare moment of calm and tranquility, do you?
- Books
Reading is a lot of fun but you should know exactly how to do it right. To make this activity more attractive try to change your voice according to the changing action in the book, make funny faces or simple characterizations. Make it right and your child will love reading! He’ll most probably look forward to it every day. For example, before going to sleep. But don’t read any scary or stressful stories. Rather ones with a lot of interesting adventures, some hilarious twists of action and a happy ending.
- Build a castle
Sounds bold?! Don’t worry too much. We don’t mean here anything very spectacular or expensive. Your own, very unique castle can be built of chairs, blankets, sticks, foil, sand, snow etc. Your imagination plays a vital role here. Your child will surely be delighted seeing that his own parent made a true castle for him! Even if its quality is objectively very questionable. This is really not what this is all about. What is important is your initiative and a shared adventure!
- Cook
Before you say that you’re not too good cooker let me ask you a question. You can do scrambled eggs, right? Well add to it hot chocolate and that’s more than enough to be a true master chief in the eyes of your child. Just let your children help a little during meal preparation. They usually are not very helpful in the kitchen but who cares! Just enjoy your the time spent together. And a flour from the floor can always be cleaned later.
As you can see spending quality time with children doesn’t have to require a lot of money or fuel. Just try any of mentioned activities or figure out your own. Life is too short to spend most of it at work, away from your relatives. I know that it’s easier to say than do but let’s at least try hard.
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