Whatever Happened to "Quality Time"?

I am currently enrolled in a Life Histories class here at Elon, where I work. In class yesterday, we discussed family memories and the professor asked us what we remembered most, the big family events such as vacations to Disneyland, or every day life? Since I was fortunate to grow-up with a stay-at-home mother, many of my memories are of the mundane variety, life at home helping out my mother. However, I have many “BIG” memories too. Summers spent in Lake Tahoe, family reunion in Hawaii and nobody celebrates Christmas like my Grandma.

In my early years of parenthood (nearly 18 years ago now) the big buzz word was "quality time"-instead of worrying about spending every waking minute with our children, we parents were encouraged to think about the quality of the time we spent with our kids. Quality was supposed to trump quantity. But, it seems that discussion has fallen out of favor, or at least fallen out of the public eye...

You probably won't be surprised to discover that I actually think that both quality and quantity are important. Now that I have lived through many years of parenting trenches, I can see that sometimes just being available and "hanging out" is darn good parenting. But, I also think that putting the effort into really connecting and being available and attentive is important too. When I chat with my teenagers and we look back over the years-they remember some really cool "quality time" that we spent together, but they are just as likely to feel some appreciation for the fact that I was as available and present as I could be-working from home whenever possible, helping with their classes and sports teams, including them on grocery trips, etc. Some of that boring, mundane stuff of family life has value too.

Our family life lately has been filled with both mundane and quality time! Nothing beats sitting in the bleachers while your son competes in a Marching Band competition and their band wins awards galore, or when your other son scores the first big goal of his high school sports career both of which happened recently. But then just taking a Sunday drive to check out the progress on our new house and listening to some family favorites on the CD player seems like Heaven!

So, like most things, I think there is something to be said for balance. Perhaps "quality time" fell out of favor because it sounded too regimented; it sounded like an excuse or a justification for busy working parents. I am a busy working parent, but I'm into the quantity parenting time too. After all, before you know it, those years are GONE and even if you have a few, fond, quality memories-I think I'd rather have a whole bunch of quality AND ordinary memories to carry with me!

Thanks Mom & Dad for both the ordinary and the extraordinary memories that I carry with me and for teaching me how to get the most out of family life.