Latest / 5–Minute Parenting: Tips to Help You Raise Competent, Godly Kids. / Quality Time vs. Quantity Time with Special Guest Dr. Mel Tavares

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Quality Time vs. Quantity Time with Special Guest Dr. Mel Tavares · 5–Minute Parenting: Tips to Help You Raise Competent, Godly Kids.

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to another episode of the Five Minute Parenting Podcast.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Karen Ferguson, wife, mom, grandma, and children's book author with a background in case education and a passion for equipping parents to raise confident and god-confident kids.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: In this podcast, we'll cover parenting practices for both a practical view and a biblical view.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: Our goal is to help you raise kids with a positive, godly self-image so they can become all they were created to be.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: I know you're busy, but we'll keep it short.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Let's take just five minutes and dive in.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, listeners.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Today we're talking quality time versus quantity time with special guest, Dr.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Mel Tavares.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Dr.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Mel is an award-winning author, speaker, life coach, and frequent media guest.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: She holds a doctorate of ministry and pastoral care and counseling and has 35 years experience working with families professionally and in ministry.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: She's a board-certified mental health coach and life coach, and she and her husband live in Connecticut.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: They have seven adult children and 11 grandchildren.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the show, Dr.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Mel.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: This is a great topic.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: I know as parents, we do our best to spend quantity time with our kids, but busy calendars can make that challenging.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I've always heard that quality time is more important than quantity time.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm curious if that's true.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm just excited to have you here and hear what you have to share with our listeners.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: It is great to be back with everybody.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this is an important topic.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: We um we do often hear that quality time is it, you know, it is more important than quantity time.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: But I have come to understand, experience, believe, and backed up statistically that that is not really the case.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll explain why.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because in Proverbs 22, 6, we're told, you know, we I think we all as parents and grandparents, we understand that command: train up a child and the way it will go, and when he is older, he will not depart.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: And or she.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, in order to train it, that brick by brick laying of the foundation, that does take a lot of time.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: We know that.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I I have a new book that I am uh working on right now, Making Families Great Again, that's coming out in a couple of months.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so I've been researching all this data and statistics again.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: And what's happened is parents have kind of done a pendulum shift over to as long as I'm there for the quality things, then I'm doing a great job.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Meaning I try to show up to their games.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: I make sure that you know there's a little Valentine on the table for the for Valentine's Day.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: I make sure that I um am taking them to birthday parties or I make sure I give them a birthday party.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And but the rest of the week, the rest of the month, and the rest of the year, in fact, is just so busy, so, so busy for parents.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that's you know, a whole different topic about the lifestyle, the rat race that we have found ourselves caught up in.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and so there's very little time for quantity, but in fact, that's what we need.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: So if we think about how much time does it take, um, I'll I'll use the example of an athlete for an athlete to be able to compete at a um high level, whether we're talking like a pro sport or Olympics or even to do really well in a um in a high school sport, that takes a lot of time and a lot of training and it's brick by brick.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's the same kind of thing with parenting.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: So whether we're talking about building someone's emotional, mental health foundation or their spiritual foundation, or their physical foundation, it takes a lot of hours a week.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it that's why we have a stressed-out generation of parents, is you know, so I I'll I'll shift in just a second to talking about well, how do we resolve that considering that there is so much going on?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: But let's talk about the spiritual, you know.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: We often say that uh as church leaders, we can't do the job of a parent by a parent dropping a child off for Sunday school or youth group or something for a couple hours a week.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: We can't give them all that they need as a spiritual foundation in that amount of time.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yet the truth is that there are many parents that have kind of relegated that aspect of life to the church, the local church that they bring their kids to, and not putting the time in to pray with them, not teaching them precept on precept at home and all of those kinds of things for sheer lack of time.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's it's a hard, it's a hard thing.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying that it's it's not, but what I am saying is we have to kind of as parents take a good look at what is it that I'm maybe doing that I could shift that amount of time.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: For example, and we talked about I think the last time I was on that, you know, the importance of parents' role modeling, put your screen down, put your phone down, put your device down, interact with each other.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so just that one action builds more qual quantity of time.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: How about um, you know, I believe male and female need to know how to cook.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe you can grab a little extra quantity time by bringing somebody into the kitchen with you, having them be your sous chef, have them prep with you, have them learn how, you know, I have an 11-year-old granddaughter, and she is a great cook.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: She can cook a lot of different things already at 11.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so if that's all she knew how to do going into adulthood, she wouldn't starve, and neither would her family.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, she she can pretty much cook anything.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it's great.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, but that takes time.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: It takes time to teach them how to do that.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I would, you know, say we have to really um think through again what I'm saying about what do we do in our day-to-day activities.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say a parent is out working all day, the kids are in school or whatever, homeschool parents and um and others that don't have kids in a lot of extracurricular obviously have a little more flexibility to build in quantity.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but working parents, and there are many, many, many in today's economy, parents are both working, kids are in extracurricular.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: So in that case, you build in the quantity of time instead of everybody just listening to the radio on the way to soccer practice or whatever you're doing.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how about, or everybody on their device except for the driver?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want the driver on their device.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, but you know, use that time to interact and have a meaningful conversation.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've got 20 minutes a day and you multiply that out over, you know, oh the course of the week, you've got an extra two hours of quality and quantity time built in.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I would not ever want a parent to feel like I'm kind of, you know, that I'm saying, hey, you need to figure it out, or you all need to quit your jobs and come home.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just saying mindfulness of like, listen, we can't, they're not gonna learn it automatically.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Somehow we have to teach them brick by brick.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: It could be that, um, and back when I was raising my kids, we had a whole litany of films from Focus on the Family called Feature Films, and they had great life lessons in them.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure there are things that a person can watch either YouTube or Netflix or something that is a very intentional parenting thing to choose that movie, have a parent, you know, a movie night, and then you can talk about it.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: But make sure there's a life lesson in there so that it's good or bad, and that will be very intentional um quant quantity of time.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to be, it's easy to mix them up.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: So the quantity and then the quality, you know, we can in the busy, busy, busy, we have to, it takes a little planning, but that you know, we do a lot of our planning in our head anyway.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, and moms typically are the ones that you know have to do it.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: So it it could be that you know, we're planning for a special uh, you know, birthday party.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'll use as an example, like, oh, you know, I gotta buy the cake.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: We're buying cakes instead of making them these days.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's okay.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Cupcakes instead of cakes, you know, balloons, decorations, whatever.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but just to make them feel very special and connected.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'll end with this and address the listening grandparents because I know we have quite a few grandparents that listen on this show and quite a few grandparents that are also caregivers, either part-time, full-time, some have custody of their grandkids.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll talk, but I'll I'll speak to the ones who are like me that have grandkids all around and and I am not raising them, but I want to influence them.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll I'll say this in closing is that grandparents are responsible for the quality things and influence the quantity, but really the quantity, unless a grandparent is the full-time caregiver, the quantity of time shifts, and now we as grandparents step back and we can do the quality things, like me going to pick up my granddaughter today and taking her out thrifting because she's got an early release day from school, and that becomes a memory builder and it lets her know, like, hey, grandma loves you, I love you very much.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: And if I'm intentional, there'll be opportunities to speak some of those brick building lessons into her life as we have fun, but it's not my responsibility, that's the parents.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: So, um, yeah, the quantity of time is such an important factor because if we don't do it, someone else is going to, and I'll leave with that.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: If we don't do it, someone else is going to, whether it's the school, an influencer on social media, a YouTuber, somebody, somebody is going to influence them and put those bricks of foundation down in the kids' life.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't want it to be the wrong people.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: So we kind of have to strategically plan that out.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: That is so important.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: These these are great points, Dr.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: Mel.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for sharing them.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it, you know, what I'm hearing is there has to be a kind of a shift in mindset as we look at our calendars and do some reprioritizing uh within our families.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: And also, yeah, when we're together, you know, making sure we're not letting the phone distract us.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: I know, I mean, I need to work on that myself.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's so easy to get into that habit.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: And you make a good point, you know, if if we as parents aren't there the majority of time for our kids, someone else is going to take that place.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: And we just we don't want it to be the wrong influence.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: So this is great, very insightful and helpful.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for sharing.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I do want to highlight before we close your website as a resource for listeners where they can access your books and get information on your coaching services.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: So tell people the best place to find you online.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I've tried to group it all onto the website.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's a work in progress, but you can find it there or in my email address, whatever.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: D-R-M-E-L-T-A-V-A-R-E-S, Dr.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Meltavaras.com.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: And and links will be in the show notes for listeners.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: I encourage you to check out her website and your book.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: You said that's coming out soon.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's coming out soon.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Making families great again, talking about some of these very things in an extended fashion.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, listeners, check out her website.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: And again, thank you for being here, Dr.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: Mel.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: And listeners, thank you for joining us.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: Be sure to come back next week for another episode of Five Minute Parenting.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: And until then, have a blessed week.