Weekly Victory: Parent/Child Dates

This week we scored a couple of major wins in the "keep your kids out of therapy" category.

When you only have one or two children, spending quality alone time together can happen quite naturally.  Coordinating outings is like having your own private jet land on your own private runway.  When you have a houseful, however, you need a regular plan in place to make sure everyone is getting the attention they need.  It's more like a Monday morning flight into Chicago O'Hare Airport, in a blizzard, with no complimentary peanuts.  My husband and I have tried a lot of ways to make sure we are spending plenty of one on one time with each of our five kids.  Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don't.  Some things work for a while, but then stop.  So we are constantly in search of a better (simpler/cheaper) way to have quality outings with our kids.

In the past we've tried to schedule "dates" with our kids, but things tend to come up that throw us off schedule.  If one child has a Daddy/Daughter date scheduled for the afternoon, and Daddy gets sick, we may spend the rest of the summer trying to catch up and squeeze in that missed date, and the child inevitably feels cheated- for life!  Five years later we're still hearing, "Remember how you owe me a date to go get a snow cone at the park because you didn't take me even though you totally promised me you would?"

There is also the problem of cost.  One date a week may be affordable, but then each child will get to go out less than once a month.  That's not exactly a great rate for meaningful parental interaction.  And what one child gets, all the children will want (whether they really want it or not).  If you do something super cool once, you'll likely have to do it again and again.

This summer my mother-in-law is staying with us (don't worry, it's going surprisingly well), so we decided to add Grandma to the dating rotation as well.  Since we only have Grandma with us for a couple of months, we really wanted to be sure and plan things right this time so that by the time she leaves all the kids will  have felt like they got their fair share of Grandma's attention.

Sometimes the best plan is a simple one.  At the beginning of the summer my five year old decided he was going to make a schedule for our dates.  On his own, he got a piece of paper and wrote down his name along with all of his siblings, then he wrote them again, and again, and again.  Then next to all the kids' names, I wrote Mommy, Daddy, and Grandma, again, and again, and again.  This way each kid got paired up for at least one outing with each adult.  Then we had an epiphany: instead of trying to schedule dates in advance, we would just use the list as a way to track whose turn it was.  Every day was a possibility for a date, but not a promise.  This way there were no hurt feelings or disappointment if a date didn't happen because that child's name stays at the top of the list until they get their turn.

We set our plan into action, and it worked beautifully!  Every morning we look at the chart to see who's turn it is.  Then the adult responsible gets to decide if/how they can fit a date in that day.  If an outing naturally comes up (i.e. someone needs to go check on Great-Grandma at the hospital, errands need to be run, etc.)  the child at the top of the list gets the first opportunity to volunteer to go along and claim the outing as part of their date.  Without any advanced planning, we've averaged three dates a week this summer.  So the kids get an outing at least twice a month, and everyone is sure to get a date with Grandma before she goes home.

So once we figured out when to have these dates, we had to figure out what to do and how we were going to keep it affordable.  Some of our favorite dates are to go for half-priced slushes at Sonic (during happy hour) or a 50 cent ice cream cone at McDonald's or Burger King, then play on the playland for a while.  One dollar or less buys an hour of happiness!  Another great idea is to use up all those coupons kids bring home from school.  You know the ones I'm talking about.  Your kid reads a book, and their teacher gives them a coupon for a free personal pizza from Pizza Hut.  Then they spend every afternoon for the rest of the school year asking when you are going to take them to get their free pizza.  But you know the ugly truth: that pizza isn't really free because as soon as you walk into the restaurant, you are going to be overcome by that beautifully delicious greasy smell, and you'll end up spending another $30 on a pizza or two to bring home.  But if you go as a date, you can either split the mini pizza with your child or splurge the five bucks and get your own personal pizza.  Either way, it's unlikely to be a bank-breaking event.  Another favorite is going to the dollar store to pick out a toy or game to play with together.  Best of all are the freebie dates.  These include going on a walk, taking a drive in the car, or going to the park to swing.  Remember you don't have to spend money, just time.

This week we found another great date idea (credit goes to my MIL for thinking of it).  She and our five year old were scheduled for a date and trying to decide what to do.  She suggested going shoe shopping (something that needed to get done anyway).  He was super excited about the idea of going to buy shoes with Grandma!  So something that had to get done anyway (he really needed new shoes) turned into a fun date with Grandma.  In the end, we didn't spend any more money that we already planned to, but our five year old got some quality time alone with Grandma and he loves his shoes even more than he normally would have because they were a special treat from Grandma. Win/Win!

I think there will be a lot more of these shopping dates in our future.  School shopping, birthday shopping, maybe even grocery shopping!  Any type of mundane activity can be turned into a memorable event with just a little bit of tweaking.


Marcia