This past Saturday I found myself in an extremely rare situation.
Number 5 and Number 7 were both at sleepover birthday parties.
So there were only three kids home.
Number 3 (14 years old) and Number 4 (13 years old tomorrow — can you believe it???) are pretty happy to spend time alone in their rooms or on the couch watching TV when they have the chance, so they are now super low maintenance on the weekends.
Number 6 (9 years old) likes a little more attention still.
And one thing I realized this weekend is that I don’t do as much one-on-one stuff with Number 6 as I could.
I think we very often forget this as parents.
And when our kids are acting out and driving us crazy, that should really be the first area we are looking at.
How much one-on-one time are we spending with our kids?
I also think one of the things we get wrong with our thoughts about one-on-one time is we think it has to be a massive amount of time. It has to be a special outing. It has to be out of the ordinary.
It doesn’t.
Even five minutes a day of focused and mindful alone time with your kids makes a big difference.
I see this so often with moms. We have this all-or-nothing mindset.
All-or-nothing is dangerous. It’s counter-productive!
I fall into this all the time, too.
So this weekend when Number 6 asked me if I wanted to see what he made up in his room, I jumped right on that.
You know what he made?
A movie projector out of a Mini Wheats box.
These pictures are terrible, but here’s our movie theater.
It was a little distorted and a little blurry, but it was pretty cool.
“You wanna watch a show with me up here?” Number 6 asked me.
He was so cute. He got me a pillow and covered me with a blanket and we watched Captain Underpants.
And that was it.
We had a nice time alone up in Number 6’s room.
Later that night when I was putting him to bed and saying good night, he said to me, “Thank you for watching a movie with me tonight, Mommy.”
It wasn’t a big deal. But to Number 6 it kind of was.
You can make a pretty big impact more easily than you think.
Have you spent five minutes alone with any of your kids today?
If not, it’s probably not too late.
Wanna look cute while you work out?
Wanna look cute while you don’t work out?
JOIN MY BADASS ZYIA COMMUNITY.
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