1. Use targeted attention
It is proven that the amount of time spent with the child is not as important as the quality of the child. Of course, to certain limits: if you see a child less than five times a week and less than one or two hours each time, you can become a kind of guest parent. Sometimes it's not bad, but we're talking about the parents who live with their children. Mothers with many children, who have more than five or six children, know that even ten minutes of friendly, loving attention per day can be enough for a teenager to stay in contact with his or her parent. Just not to talk about lessons. Just "come here, lie down on the couch together," "let me do your hair," "let's go get a cup of tea. The preschooler, of course, needs more.
2. Talk (there is time for that)
We should find the strength to communicate on the road. Half an hour or even an hour of communication or at least an active listening - even if not every day, but when there is a mood - you need both the child and you. You can comment on what is going on outside the window, discuss something distracted. I had a period with each of my three children when I had to go somewhere just the two of us. It was a great chance to give attention to everyone, not everyone at once.
3. Read (for preschoolers and younger schoolchildren)
If you only have time for one type of leisure time, it's better to choose this one. Many children don't read enough, but devoted readers sometimes stop reading by the age of 12-13, when the "collapse in education" begins. However, the memory of the years spent behind the book with the parent is not in vain - and after 18-20 years of youth again opens the book. In addition, reading together makes it possible to wink at each other, exchanging quotes. This creates a sense of community. It is especially great to read long epics: it is peace, stability, ritual, and children get used to it.
4. Be a parent, not a governor
If we don't have enough time, we don't have to waste it on fighting and trying to raise a child in trifles. Otherwise it will all go for this! Do you know such a trick - to divide all affairs into urgent and not urgent, and also necessary and not necessary? So here we are. "Why did you scatter socks again? You don't have to bite a child at all. It is important to understand this, but it is difficult: psychologically, it is those parents who have little time for the child, feel guilty and try to somehow give him attention, clinginging to the first occasion to communication. I have not given up on the child, I am developing self-care skills! He's so unhaired, for God's sake! Did you brush your teeth?! You have to try to exhale here, soften your heart and use the 20 minutes left to sleep in some other way. If the school is not very good, this topic on a daily basis is also better to avoid. If it is necessary to find time for it, we will allocate it especially.
5. Educate in the main thing, not in the trifles
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't have to bring up little things, but you can and should bring up big things. Believe me, we hate only those morals that are read to us when we have already sinned. And everybody always listens to a good sermon on a distracted topic with their mouths open! Say the sensible, good, eternal things to your health. If you broadcast the ideals calmly, even a teenager will not hate them. Everything that you have, everything that helps you in life - on practical applied examples, as well as in the parables, works of world literature and anywhere else.
6. Sometimes take your children with you for
What's the point? Let them see Mom or Dad in their natural habitat, not just at home. Let everyone move on: employers, colleagues, partners. Because you have a child and you have no one to leave with. Or you just don't want to part with it today. Your obedient servant sat with her one-year-old daughter on the National Bestseller Awards Jury, and with a five-month-old girl went on stage in the final of the Big Book. And the chest right on the stage gave, live on all TV channels. Nothing, nobody died of it, but, on the contrary, some were fed up and satisfied.
7. Don't burden yourself or your child with guilt
Yes, you have to work, you have to live your life. Maybe you don't have the strength for this minimum. Or desires. Maybe your child lives with another parent at all, and you are seen from time to time. There are only situations in life. Try not to chew yourself up and get angry with your child when he eats your last resource. Life is long, you will have a lot of chances to be together, to establish relationships, to get to know each other. Even after he grows up. Now we will just do what we want and can.