We all know that quality time is important but it is just so hard to fit in!! Here’s some great tips on making this less of a chore and more fun for everyone and you will all benefit in the process.

• Make a commitment to yourself and your child to spend a set amount of time with them on a regular basis. Negotiate the length of time and regularity but a good place to start is half an hour each week or fortnight ( Be clear about how long, what time and what day and then stick to it)

• Parent and child lists activities and events they would like to undertake in this time and then meet to see each others’ lists. Lists should entail mostly free activities but can include a few options which require nominal amounts of money. (ideas below)

• Be open about new ideas but delete absolutely NO activities off each others lists and write the others on small pieces of paper and place inside a hat, bucket or container. Allow your child to pick one out and make a Date for that week.

• On your date focus and spend your time entirely with your child in that activity. At the completion of your date, choose another activity out of the hat and make the commitment for the following week and so on.

• When you have nearly run out of activities in your bucket, create some more and continue on.

• Revisit the length of time and regularity for the activities. You may wish to make it longer and less often or shorter and more often. Make agreements around this and commit to it fully or negotiate until you can.

Ideas for Free Activities

Go for a walk

Play a card game or a board game

Watch a video or TV program and discuss

Have lunch together and talk

Go to the park

Walk the dog

Look through photos

Clean out a room

Rearrange a room

Draw or write together

Read together and talk

Window Shopping

Cook together

Teach or show each other a special skill

Ideas for minimal cost activities

Go to a swish coffee shop for a milkshake

Go shopping

Go to the zoo, circus, movies

Go out for lunch or dinner

Redecorate a room – paint etc

Go to the gym

Try new things – dance, watersports

Go for a drive

Do a course together

Go to a book café

Get a beauty treatment together

Get a haircut together

Go to a show

By Rebecca Doughty