Why you should date your kids…and 50 fun date ideas!
Whether you’re a newbie to this whole parenting thing, or a seasoned veteran, we all want to have a close relationship with our children, young or old. Strengthening relationships and communication with our children can boil down to one thing: spending time with them.
10,000 hours?
In the book Outliers (an amazing read, by the way, that puts a fascinating perspective the opportunities we give our kids), author Malcolm Gladwell argues that the great achievers in our society weren’t born great: they just put in the most hours. His 10,000-hour rule claims that the key to success in any field is practicing a task for at least 10,000 hours. Could this apply to being a stellar parent? You bet.
You can argue that a full time, on-call 24 hours a day parent, puts in waayyy more than 10,000 hours. We’re with our kids all the time (good grief, in just one year there are 8,760 hours!), shouldn’t just being together be enough to go pro? But just hanging around the basketball court never made Michael Jordan the best basketball player of all time, did it?
One of the best things we can do as parents is spend some special time with each of our children. Time is one of the most valuable gifts we can give, and, if wasted, we can never get that time back. So often I’ve been in the grocery store with my three crazies crawling all over me and had an elderly person tell me, “Treasure those little ones while you can, they grow up so fast.”
Could spending 10,000 hours of quality time really make a difference in our relationships?
Dating your kids
One of my resolutions this year is to start going on dates with my kids. I think “date” is a very appropriate term. A date involves time spent one-on-one trying to learn more about a person, talking, asking questions, communicating, building relationships. Why not date our kids?
Going on regular dates with our kids will open lines of communication and build strong relationships that will weather the good and bad times in life. If you can talk easily now, you’ll be able to talk when it really counts.
There is something simply sweet and yet profoundly important in spending one-on-one time with each individual child. It doesn’t matter what you do, what matters is that you talk, laugh, cry, agree, disagree, and always part ways with an “I love you.”
How often?
Once a month is a good benchmark for special one-on-one dates with your child. In this recent Facebook convo with some of our fantastic readers, Stacy L. had this great idea:
“(Every month,) each child gets to pick which parent they want to go out with and on their birthday number (if born on the 26th then the 26th is their special day), we go do something they choose to do. Bowling, movie, dinner, ice cream. The kids know that they will have their special day the same day every month.”
Decide what works best for your family and your schedule. Maybe it’s every Saturday morning, or maybe you live life on the edge and your dates are more impromptu. Just do them regularly and you can’t go wrong!
50 fun date ideas
Generated by our FB conversation, these date ideas are perfect for toddlers, teens, and even adult children!
Copy this list and print it out at home where you and your children can have fun planning your special dates. Or, cut each idea into a strip and place it in a jar. When it’s time for your date, pull one out and let fate decide!
Here’s to logging in 10,000 hours of fun, unique individual time with our children. And if you have any other great ideas or success stories, please share!
