Share your passion with your kids

A few years ago, it was popular to talk about balancing work and family in a pretty weird way. People would say, “Quality time is more important than quantity time.”

Hogwash.

Don’t Worship Work or Family

Now, I love my work as much as anybody. Maybe more. I really really love my work. But life is about more than work. Unfortunately, our society has a historical tendency to idolize work. Lately, some pockets of our culture have swung the other way and started to idolize family.

I’m all for the metaphor of the centered life over the balanced life, but balance is what we do with scarce resources. And in my life, time is in short supply.

What can a working parent do? How do we economize time in a way that honors both our work and our family?

I can’t guarantee quality, but I can do my best to ensure quantity. In the Goodyear household this means we have dinner together virtually every evening. We do have a weekly “movie night” when we eat on TV trays. But otherwise, we have an old fashioned dinner around the table with a prayer and everything. My daughter will read one of the verse cards that we keep in a basket with the salt and the pepper and the napkins. And we share the highs and lows of our day. Sometimes it is a beautiful thing. I feel like I’m Father Knows Best and my wife is Donna Reed. Other times, it feels rote and messy, like something out of A Christmas Story.

And sometimes I’m away on business travel. What can you do?

Three Tricks

I do know three tricks for getting the odds in my favor that our time together will be quality.

First, dinner. It is always better when we have Paula Dean’s Bacon Cheeseburger Meatloaf. It is like heaven on earth. Seriously, though. We just have dinner together as often as possible. It’s really important.

Second, time with the kids is always better when it involves a personal passion. I don’t know your personal passion, but mine is books. Stories, to be more precise. Every night after bath, I read to my kids. My son and I read a picture book (or two or three) while my daughter takes her bath. Then all three of us read some of a chapter book. We’re finishing up Harry Potter 3 right now, but we’ll read just about any Newberry Award books. (On a side note, my wife and I also read books to each other. We’re reading Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book right now. Super cool.)

Third, schedule really special times. If at all possible, take a vacation once a year. You don’t have to break the bank. In our lean years, we’ve taken three day weekends to go camping. (And my wife hates camping.) If you are in Texas, a weekend at Laity Lodge Family Camp is moderately affordable (when you consider that they house you and feed you and entertain you like nobody’s business). Disney World can be fun once or twice in a lifetime if you can afford that without getting into serious debt.

Note: This post is part of the Family Fun Time Giveaway with Laity Lodge Family Camp. Since I work for the H. E. Butt Foundation, I can’t win a free weekend for my family there, but you can. That’s no small prize by the way. A weekend at Family Camp is worth nearly $500. And air fare is really cheap this year. (I flew from Texas to Pittsburgh for $200 a few weeks ago.) If you live in Texas, air fare isn’t really an issue. And the contest is easy. Read the details here there are all kinds of pictures and stuff you can include in your post. And there are videos like this one:

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Tagged as: Donna Reed, family, Father Knows Best, graveyard book, Kids and Teens, laity lodge family camp, laity-lodge, neil gaiman, parenting