The amount of time and affection a child needs varies by age, maturity level, and personal preference. Three minutes a day is not enough to fulfill a relationship, but a well placed 3 minutes per day can take you further than any 20 minute rant.
The first three minutes of the day
Its always a special treat if I am around when any of my kids first wake up in the morning. There's something about getting 100% attention, cuddles, warm kisses, toe counting for little ones, gentle back rubs for older ones, that puts children in a happy mindset that can last all day long.
Greet your child with 100% attention in the morning and watch them thrive.
Making breakfast, setting out morning clothes, brushing teeth and brushing hair is loving and beautiful, but children don't recognize those attentions until they are more mature. Aim for three whole minutes spent on just them. Make sure that your eyes, ears, and hands are involved with your child. Avoid having one foot pointed towards the door. Children can tell when you have their attention. Give it to them.
Three minutes before you drop them off at an event
Your attention won't be 100% on your child at this time. It will be on traveling to the event.
Make sure that the last three minutes before your child is dropped off are attention filled minutes. Encourage them, tell them they will do great, remind them to have fun, express your love, look them in the eye, and fill them with well wishes.
When driving, its easy to get caught up on the road. Lights don't do what you need them to, cars don't alway signal correctly, and there is a lot going on. Make sure your chid's last interaction with you before being dropped off is an aware interaction filled with attention from their adult.
Three minutes after they get picked up from an event
Its so easy to have a cell phone out while waiting for your child. Sometimes we think we're doing something positive, by talking care of small errands while we wait, we might even be greeting our child by taking a picture. But really the child doesn't know the difference. We spend a lot of time on our phones, Children can't tell if we're chatting with auntie, facebooking grandma, answering comments on steemit, or playing with Castles. They just know that we aren't paying attention to them.
Be present when picking them up and have your attention steered toward them. Hear all about their event, how they spent it, who was nice, who was mean, and simply listen. My daughter is much more pleasant when I greet her after school with attention than when I wave at her while finishing the task Im taking care of on the phone and then say hello.
Children first, buttoning up steemit comments, second.
Three minutes in the late evening
Sometimes the day will have been good, sometimes, it will have needed some adjustments. Sometimes you won't even want to talk about the day, because it was so exhausting. It doesn't matter what you chat about at night, what matters is that you chat. Let a loving person be the last thing your child (wether a little kid or late teen) goes to bed with.
Those are some simple suggestion on how a little bit of time invested in the right part of the day can lead to a more connected life with your child.
The more children you have, the more important it is to make our minutes count. A single child will never feel lost in the crowd. A child of one will never say "my older sister was kind of like my mom." Attention every day, they crave it, they need it, and its a great investment.
Thank you for taking the time to read my opinion. Do you have an easy solution to spending one on one time with your kids? I'd love to hear about it in the comments.