Family rituals - Part 1 - One on One time

Help your young children to feel loved, noticed, heard, safe, secure and important.

Its one thing to tell your kids "I Love You', it's a whole different thing for them to really feel and know it.

A wise Psychologist once gave me the following advice:

•  Give each child 10 minutes each day of one on one time, everyday, this is a non negotiable: dishes and laundry will have to take a back seat.
• In this 10 minutes, they get to choose what you do together (obviously you set up rules prior to fit in with your family).
• The other children are not allowed to disrupt this time - this can be tricky if you are a solo parent or your partner works away. (There are ways around it though; such as when one is asleep. You can give them a special activity they only get when you're doing your 1:1 with the other child. As they get older they begin to understand how important their own 1:1 time is and will be less likely to trey to interrupt their sibling's time).
• Making this time shows them how important they are to you and you will both come to really look forward to your special time, it might be reading a book, playing a game or just staring up at the clouds shooting the breeze.
• If each parent can do ten minutes with each child this will build confidence within your children.
• As the children get older, you might like to have them do 10 minutes with each other as well, perhaps each child gets to choose what the activity is, this is especially helpful if they are quite different, helping with bonding.

When our family went through big changes, this was one constant which grounded us all. I hope you love it as much as we do.

Jodi x