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The Myth of Quality Time
Robert Evans, Ed.D.
One of the great myths of parenting is Quality
Time, the idea that childrearing can be handled
in short doses of positive interaction. We
may be too busy to spend much time with our children,
so this theory goes, but it’s alright if
that time is full of high quality contact. Unfortunately,
this rarely works, in good part because children,
by their very nature, provoke large quantities
of low quality time.
I learned this lesson the hard way. Years
ago, back when the Celtics were still a powerhouse,
I kept hearing that I was the only father who
never took his children to a Celtics game. One
Wednesday, when I was offered four tickets, I
bought them despite the cost and even though
the game was on a school night and my younger
son was in third grade.
The tickets turned out to be available because
the opponents were terrible. The Celtics
blew them out and, with four minutes left to
play, I was ready to join the fans who were leaving. My
son demanded to stay to the end. We ended
up with me dragging him away as he clutched at
the railing in front of him.
When we got home at 10:00 p.m. I said, “Bedtime.”
He said, “I’m hungry.”
“Listen,” I told him, “we
ate before we left, you had two big pretzels
and a hotdog. It’s 10:00 on a school
night. Upstairs.”
He looked at me and said—I’ve never
let him forget this—“You never do
what I want!” There may be many things
to do with a child in such a moment, but having
a high quality interaction is not among them.
I think there are several lessons here. This
first is that our kids won’t let us have
just quality time only. Their needs and
wishes, their natural self-centeredness make
this impossible. To expect otherwise is to invite
frustration and guilt.
Moreover, friction is not just inevitable, it’s
useful. Low quality events not only do
happen, they need to happen. They
may not be fun, but they are vital learning experiences
for children. How else will they know what
to do when their own children exasperate them? (When
you have really had it with your kids, whose
tone of voice do you use, your mother’s
or your father’s?)
Trying to force our children onto a diet of
brief, high quality time can only strip the naturalness
right out of our communication. Imagine,
for instance, that I asked you to sit down right
now and have a high-quality conversation with
your spouse or a friend. The demand itself
is disabling. We can only have high quality
time together if we have enough total time so
that we can tolerate the inevitable low quality
moments.
We also need to remember that children learn
from everything we say and do. We
are teaching them all the time, not just when
we think we’re teaching them. We
need to think about the example we’re setting,
not just the message we’re preaching.
At the Human Relations Service, we treat many
children who are struggling with problems that
affect their psychological and social development. In
most cases their parents are trying hard to raise
them well, but often they themselves are swamped,
busy, overworked, and stressed. They lack
the time to just “be” with their
children, and they are hoping that somehow parenting
can be concentrated into good moments, but they
end up with the opposite of what they seek.
Our experience is that children need all sorts
of time with parents, both high quality and low,
structured and unstructured. A lack of
parental attention contributes to many of the
common behavior and academic problems that affect
children. “All sorts of time” does
not necessarily mean “huge amounts.” For
example, small increases in time spent enjoying
an activity together can make a big difference
in a parent-child relationship. Focussing
on what you treasure about your child, not just
how she needs to improve, or how she compares
to other kids also helps. When we work
with parents, we try to help them identify and
increase the interactions with their children
that work well. Sometimes, a child’s
problems are more serious and may require extensive
help. That’s in part why agencies
like ours exist. But even then the problem
is likely to be, as we say, something that will
improve with time.
Dr. Evans, a psychologist, is the Director of
HRS. This article is adapted from his book, Family
Matters: How Schools Can Cope with The Crisis
in Childrearing.
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