The Five Minutes A Day Challenge

When your kids are pushing your buttons and driving you insane and testing your very last bit of patience, the usually aren’t trying to intentionally piss you off.

They are trying to send you a message.

They need some attention.

If anyone can relate to this, it’s me.

It’s probably my biggest challenge as a parent.

With five kids at home between the ages of 6 and 13, all the kids still need and want my undivided attention every single day.

Between the swim practices and baseball games and driving all over the place and the responsibilities that accompany motherhood plus working from home, this is one area where I often drop the ball.

Not right now and in a few minutes and maybe later and I’m too busy are words that escape my lips all too often.

And I can tell when I’ve been saying those things way too frequently when my kids start arguing and acting out and doing all the things they know they aren’t supposed to do.

With the school year starting in less than two weeks and the craziness of the after-school routines during the week, spending one-on-one time with the kids will become even more of a challenge for me.

So I came up with a solution.

In my most recent online fitness course, I made a 28 day fitness challenge for the participants. It’s got 28 mini challenges. Some take more time than others, but most of them can be completed in less than ten minutes, and some in only one minute.

But even just one minute a day adds up to some significant benefits over the course of a month.

Here is the one we are currently working on:

There is no particular order to do any of those daily challenges. They can be done whenever you want on whatever day you want.  And if there are days you don’t get one done, you can easily double up on another day.

This has worked so well that I thought I’d make one for my kids.

A 28 day challenge to spend five minutes a day with each of them.

I know five minutes doesn’t seem like a lot. Like it’s something that you already automatically do.

But for me, one-on-one time is kind of an exception to the rule. Especially on weekdays during the school year.

Doing this will help me stay connected with the kids during that transition from summer to school.

And this calendar is definitely better suited for the younger kids — for Numbers 5, 6 and 7 who are nine, eight, and six years old.

I’m gonna have to adjust it slightly for the older two.

But I know if I can make the daily 25 minute investment of time with each of the kids, a couple things will happen.

First, I’ll be connecting with my children every day.

Consequently, connecting with the kids daily will significantly cut down on the amount of arguing, fighting and button pushing that takes place every day. My patience won’t be tested nearly as often, and I’ll be a much nicer mom.

Finally, this will really help me to stay disciplined with being more efficient with the things I need and want to get done while the kids are at school so I am completely present for them when they start rolling in the door every day between 3 and 4 pm.

Number 7 has already seen the challenge, and has picked out what box she wants to check off first.

We will do this for four weeks, assess what things we really enjoyed, and then maybe we’ll make a new 28 day challenge together for the next round.

Actually, that’s a good activity to put in one of those boxes… Make the next 5 minutes a day challenge!

If spending quality, one-on-one time is also a challenge for you, you can design one for your kids, or print this chart out, and get started tomorrow!

Click here for a pdf of the challenge ——-> The Five Minute A Day Challenge

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