The Johnson Crew!

Do you have a big family do you find it difficult to get quality time in with each of your kids me too this is something that a homeschool mom probably assumes is a given and yet it's not so let's talk about some ways that we can be mindful of our kids needs and proactively making sure that we get in that quality one-on-one time with each of our kids welcome back to my channel if you're new here my name is Sarah and my channel is all about homeschooling

And life as a family of six so if that interests you go ahead and hit that subscribe button below today's video is in collaboration with my sweet friend anna over at just making it work and her channel is amazing it's all about large homeschooling family logistics and home management tips she is full of amazing time saving time management tips so go and give her a follow for sure and I'm going to put a link to her channel below and she is also posting a video today about this exact same topic

And how she manages it with her family of eight yes she has six kids so go and check her out next there will be a link in the description box below to our playlist so you can get some ideas from her perspective as well I have four kids they are nine seven five and three so three of those are boys and my one girl is the seven-year-old and boy are they all different and you probably experienced this in your home too where each kid is

So different from each other and different from you and your spouse we come into parenting with our own preconceptions of how things are going to go you know based on how we were raised and what our own personality type is and then we're given these children who have their own unique personalities and we've got to really change those ideas that we once had because our kids are different than us and I know it's crazy to think that a mom who is at home all day with her kids might still not be spending true quality time with them

But that does happen and I am guilty of that a lot we might be around all day but are we truly present with them I'm helping them with their school and facilitating their video courses but I'm also being pulled out of the room to tend to my toddler or trying to clean up around the house or get laundry done you know our to-do lists are never ending right so a lot of times I'm there but up here I'm not really all there now don't get me wrong school time is still extremely valuable time together

But I feel like I spend a lot of that time having to correct them and pull them back to focus on their schoolwork so I'm left feeling like we still didn't really connect all morning long right it was just we need to do these things but if you're currently like me and it doesn't feel like rainbows and sunshine every day I still feel like we need that time in the day where we just slow down and are able to focus on one kid at a time without the over stimulation of the rest of the family right we all know that quality time is

So important as a family but it's also super important on an individual level that one-on-one time with a parent really helps them feel special loved and heard it feeds their self-esteem and confidence and their love tank and also builds a stronger relationship between the parent and the child but if you're like me and are very nervous about the teen years what I've heard is the main key thing from parents who've already raised their kids is communication these moms with teenagers and adult children now will tell you that if you want to have open communication with your teenagers that starts at a young age you've got to start building that up before they become teenagers

And I'm not saying that it's ever too late but these younger years are important for carving out special time for just them so that they can be heard they can talk to you about things that are on their mind maybe things that they don't want to talk about in front of their other siblings and so we've got to carve out that one-on-one time that space for them to talk privately and I don't know about you but it is pretty hard to find that private space

And time in the day to have a conversation with just one of my children because there's always three others who are wanting my attention so how do we carve out time for these one-on-one conversations and this quality time with each kid I have a few ideas for you but I'll start with this one dates my husband and I will take turns taking out one kid at a time on a date and they feel super special that they get to go on a date because they see us go on dates from time to time

And always want to come with us which that's a hard no and so now they are getting their turn to also go out on a date and it's very special time that we can just focus on each other and I very much enjoy those times I feel like when I'm just at home and everybody's around it's way more stressful to try to focus in on one kid but when we carve out that time for just two of us to go out oh man those conversations are

So much easier and I can be so much more present and focused on just them so I very much appreciate these times now we don't start this until they turn four and we don't have a certain schedule that we stick to for this where we say it's going to be once a week for each different kid or anything like that because we do run our own wedding photography business so we do have much busier seasons and then we have some slower seasons so we kind of like to be able to go with the flow of what our schedule looks like

And we don't want to ever make them feel bad by making them feel like they got gypped one week or something so it's just kind of a nice special treat for them like oh hey you want to go on a date tomorrow or next week or but our goal which is still flexible is to be taking out at least one kid every other week and when I say one kid I mean just one of us on that one week so and that feels like a doable schedule for us most of the time

So what do we do on these dates they certainly aren't fancy and honestly you could do things that don't cost any money at all we usually choose to take them out to breakfast and they really love this we rarely ever take them out to a non-fast food restaurant as a family that's just has not been fun with having young ones I'm sure we'll reach a level where it is more fun to go out as a group but we like to take them to like cracker barrel or waffle house for breakfast

And it's just a nice time to just chit chat over some food and side note since we do run our own business and we homeschool breakfast dates work well with our schedule but I understand that that's not going to work well for everyone's schedule so here are some other ideas you could take them to a park where there are some trails for you to walk and talk on and that's completely free you can take them shopping for some new clothes could take them to go get ice cream or to the grocery store to buy some ingredients for something y'all want to make together or get really fun take them to like a trampoline park or an arcade

And just play together and I'm sure once you start thinking about it you can come up with a lot of ideas that your kids would love to do and you can ask them too what do you want to do with our special time together and it's usually not so much about the activity but rather just this chance for them to have your undivided attention and for you all to have some uninterrupted talk time now since we have three kids that are old enough for the dates

And there are two parents it's not that often that each kid gets taken out with a particular parent so this is not the only way that we ensure to get some quality time in with them another thing that we like to do and and this is more usually my husband that does this because to be honest by the end of the day I am pretty spent um but we will let one kid stay up like 20 minutes past bedtime with us and either play a game or just talk usually playing something on their ipad because we don't typically play games together on their ipad

So they either want to show us what they've built on minecraft or you know some game that they've gotten to some new level on or us actually play something together so that's that's a good little time and in this house we are like super on point about bedtime because mama is ready to clock out for the day uh yeah so we are like eight o'clock time to go brush your teeth and go potty um and you know we read a story together and pray and are normally lights out by like 8 30

So um to let them stay up 20 minutes later is not that big of a deal for us we do very much cherish our alone time after the kids go to bed but 20 minutes is not too big of an infringement right and so it's nice to be able to have that time and just hang out just us another thing that I would like to do better at is every afternoon we have quiet time and my youngest that's three takes a nap still and I usually spend this time getting work done or working out or cleaning

And it's really great break for me but it's also a great time to just spend like 10 minutes with one of the kids they can come hang out in my room and we can just chit chat for a little bit and of course if they seem like they need to talk longer I certainly will but just to to tell yourself yeah I'm just going to take 10 minutes at the beginning of this quiet time to just spend some alone time with this one child and then I can go

And tackle the rest of my to-do list but this is a pretty good time of the day where I shouldn't be getting interrupted and I really can focus on just that one child if you have some other ideas that can help us moms please leave those in the comments below I love that so much about this community here on youtube that we can all share with each other I hope these ideas are helpful to you and you can tweak them to fit your family's needs

And style and I hope that just hearing that another mom struggles with this is an encouragement to you to know that you're not alone in this and that we're all trying to help each other do this parenting thing better parenting is hard but it is a worthy job and god has called each one of us to be the parent to these particular children and their personality types so even if they seem challenging at times god is equipping us as we go to be their mom if you've enjoyed this video please give it a thumbs up that helps it gets shown to more moms on youtube

And if you're new here please consider subscribing to my channel so you don't miss another video and don't forget to click the link below to the playlist so you can see anna's video and see how she manages quality time with her children all six of them and I just know you'll enjoy checking out other videos on her channel as well talk to you soon