5 Options to Spend Quality Time with Your Children, Without Gadgets

by Farheen Naaz

Part 1

Bismillah

In the previous article Gadgets and Children we have seen how gadgets have become an important part of our lives and how they can affect the growth of a child. Parents often end up not spending quality time with children due to lack of time or just to take the easy way out by handing a gadget to their child to fulfil their emotional needs. In this article, we shall look at five easy ways to spend quality time with our children, without using gadgets.

There are lots of options to choose from to spend quality time with children. The most feasible and fun ones are:

1. Read Together – Discuss

Reading is a long lost habit of the yesteryears for many kids of the present world. Start from the early years and inculcate the love for the written word in your children. You can read a book together and discuss it once you are done reading. Choose from a wide range of topics to discuss (Which character do you like the most and why? Why do you not like the other characters? Do you think the story could have ended in a better way?)

There are lots of fun after-reading and pre-reading activities which you can participate in with your children to get to know them and also mould their thoughts the proper way.

2. Eat Together (Plan a Theme for Dinner/Lunch)

Quality time can be spent together at the dining table, if one encourages this in the family. Turn off that TV and start acknowledging each other’s presence! Make sure that at least one meal of the day is eaten with the entire family concentrating on eating the food together and progressing towards discussing their day with everyone at the table. Themed dinners or lunches can be planned weekly or fortnightly depending on your schedule. It can include anything from pizza night to Italian night to Indian night or to junk food night! Choose according to your family’s tastes. It is often said that a family that eats together stays together.

Parents can even team up with their children and plan a get-together for their friends. Another fun way to make eating together interesting is to organize a cooking competition wherein the family can be divided into teams and take up tasks for breakfast, lunch or dinner; as per convenience.

3. Evening Walks

After a hectic and tiring day all you would want to do is just pop into that bed and go to sleep, but do not forget your children who sometimes need to talk to you. And if you are not there for them when they need you, do not wonder why they will not share things with you when they are all grown up. Evening walks after dinner are a nice way to spend time with your children, while helping each other stay healthy and fit. It gives you the opportunity to have meaningful conversations with your children and ask them about the happenings in their life.

Grocery walks are also a good way to spend time with your children. Take them to the grocery store and discuss the groceries to be bought and reasons why they do not particular food items.

4. Play a Sport/Game Together

Yup! Parents playing with their kids makes the kids feel special. There are a wide variety of indoor and outdoor games to choose from to play with your kid. Teach them a game you love, teach them all the rules of the game and teach them the tricks of the trade. It sure will make them feel special. Board games rule the spot when it comes to family fun together. Choose from anything: Scrabble, Monopoly, Ludo and Snakes and Ladders among others.

5. Do Home Improvements

One awesome way to spend quality time with your children is to involve them in the work related to your home. Do not fix the broken table on your own, get help from your kids. This will not only give you quality time you can spend with them, but it will also give them life training. Who knows, you might end up getting some better tips from your kids!

These were just some tips on easy to do activities with your children. Spending quality time with children is more important than giving them worldly things to entertain themselves. The presence of parents at every step in a child’s life will help the child develop in all aspects. It is necessary for growing up which most parents forget as they are too busy with their own lives, failing to realize that their kids are a major part of it! Memories of childhood and adolescence make adults look back at life’s lessons taught in the most subtle of ways.

What are the tips you would like to give to parents on spending quality time with children without using gadgets?

I'd love to hear your views on this topic. Please leave comments in the section below!

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