For most working parents, balancing your job’s demands with the need to spend more time with your kids can be a constant, stressful struggle.
But you can stop anxiously counting the hours and minutes you spend at work instead of home, says Dr. Tovah Klein.
The quality of the time you spend with your kids matters more than the quantity — and it’s the single biggest catalyst for your child’s development and future success, says Klein, a child psychologist and author of the book “How Toddlers Thrive,” who is director of the Barnard College Center for Toddler Development. Barnard is an undergraduate women’s college of Columbia University.
“It’s always about the quality of the relationship [and] the quality of the interactions,” Klein tells CNBC Make It.
Research bears this out: There’s no correlation between the amount of time parents spend with children between the ages of 3 and 11 and those kids’ success later in life, a 2015 study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family found.
With that in mind, focus on building meaningful connections with your children during the time you can spend with them, Klein says. That’s the key to helping them grow into confident and motivated adults.
“We want our kids to be motivated because success in life, in the business world, in the arts world and anything, has to come from some internal motivation,” Klein says.
Here are her top three tips:
Find little ways to create quality time
Most likely, your kids are “not counting the minutes or the hours” you’re spending at work, Klein says. Rather, they’re judging the quality of your interactions when you’re home.
“Is this somebody who listens to me, who responds to me, who delights in me, who supports me when I’m struggling with emotions or my friend wouldn’t play today?” Klein says. “Do I have a parent who listens and doesn’t judge me?”
There’s no minimum amount of time — besides zero, of course — you need to spend with your children to build those connections, she says. You can still…
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