# Your views on quality verses quantity when raising childern.



## Ruth n Jersey (Feb 8, 2016)

I have noticed that my kids seem to lean toward quality of time rather than quantity. I was a stay at home Mom and tried to provide both. I must admit, by the end of the  day, my nerves were a bit frazzled and quality went out the window. My kids give their children undivided attention when they are with them , go to all school functions and take them to parks etc. On the other hand, they will take short vacations by themselves, but do leave them in the hands of people they know and trust. Also have evenings out during the week. Both their kids went to day care at a very young age and then to pre school. They seem well adjusted and happy. I do notice, they don't seem to be able to entertain themselves on their own as well as my kids did and are given so many,many toys. How they raise their children is not my business and as I said they are happy little kids. Just wondering if other people have noticed this as well, and how did you raise your own kids?


----------



## Warrigal (Feb 8, 2016)

Oops. I thought you were talking about children's poetry.

Still, reading poems to children is IMO a quality interaction.
I particularly loved nonsense rhymes and anything from Robert Louis Stevenson's Child's Garden of Verse.

I worked most of the time as a school teacher and was able to combine work with time enough to be with the kids, especially during school vacations.
I paid a lady to clean my house and another to do the ironing so that I could have time on the weekends to be with the family. 

I agree that quality time with the children is important but also important is allowing children to have some relatively unsupervised time when you are close by in case of trouble.

It sounds as if your grand children are well adjusted and being raised to be resilient and resourceful adults.


----------



## Underock1 (Feb 8, 2016)

There is something to be said for both sides. As long as love for the kids is in the picture, either one can work. 
My wife was a stay at home Mom by our mutual choice and I avoided overtime and business trips wherever possible in order to spend time with our kids. I must admit, it wasn't so much a matter of us trying to be good parents, as because we really enjoyed our kids. The time goes by quick and if you miss it, there's no going back. Never raised a hand to them and they turned out great. Had a bonus round with our grandkids. Even better! That was a _long_ time ago. For most parents these days they have to scramble for survival. Day Care is the only solution for many. The kids themselves have to get off the mark pretty quick or be permanently at a disadvantage. It is a shame. We need our day dreamers. I guess there will always be some who escape through the cracks.


----------



## vickyNightowl (Feb 8, 2016)

Its not an easy job,we second guess ourselves.
I have noticed that my parents and my personal experience,is that once the kids came,it was more about them than  the couple.
New parents now are concentrating and taking the time for each other,I like that.
I also see parents not allowing kids to be kids but try to put so many expectations on them as sooon as they are born.how fast they say their first word,how fast they walk .and so on.

Mine were always with me,vacations together etc


----------



## Bluecheese50 (Feb 9, 2016)

It was my role to stay at home and bring up our kids as I had no wish to have a career. Whilst I ensured they got plenty of quality time, I also ensured I took some time out for myself too.


----------



## Babsinbloom65 (Feb 9, 2016)

Ruth n Jersey said:


> I have noticed that my kids seem to lean toward quality of time rather than quantity. I was a stay at home Mom and tried to provide both. I must admit, by the end of the  day, my nerves were a bit frazzled and quality went out the window. My kids give their children undivided attention when they are with them , go to all school functions and take them to parks etc. On the other hand, they will take short vacations by themselves, but do leave them in the hands of people they know and trust. Also have evenings out during the week. Both their kids went to day care at a very young age and then to pre school. They seem well adjusted and happy. I do notice, they don't seem to be able to entertain themselves on their own as well as my kids did and are given so many,many toys. How they raise their children is not my business and as I said they are happy little kids. Just wondering if other people have noticed this as well, and how did you raise your own kids?



My daughters pretty much follow that same pattern in raising their kids too and I think they are doing a fine job with my grandkids. But that was not how I raised my kids and would still not be how I would want to raise them. I stayed home with my kids because I was their Mom and I didn't want anyone else raising the kids God had blessed me with. My husband on the other hand would have liked me to work and raise them (he was more materialistic than I was). So to make both of us happy I ran a home Daycare with a few kids to earn some money. My girls liked helping with the babies I took in and we all got to be happy. I also notice that my grandkids are not the best at entertaining themselves and even though they have everything money can buy, they are often talking about being bored. When they tell me this, I tell them they are much to young to be bored! When I was raising my own girls they had time to just be a kid but it doesn't seem to be the way of the world now days. My grandkids are either in school, in some after school activity, or going from one place to another. I often think what's the use of having their home...if they never get to be there except to sleep, eat, and take a bath. And since I'm a homebody at heart, I do not attend all their various activities unless I want to or my daughters' tell me it is very important to them that I be at a certain activity on a certain date. My daughters and grandkids lives are very different from when I was raising my kids...but they seem happy with their lives and that is all that matters to me. I think most parents do the best they can to have quality and quantity when raising their kids, but I think it's much more of a challenge to give both in today's world.


----------



## fureverywhere (Feb 9, 2016)

My little beasts...I mean offspring...would sometimes whine as adults..." You were never here!". What a frickin' cop out, I didn't have a habit...I was working full time and going to school nights and weekends plus five kids. Shoot me, I did what I could. I did what I felt I was supposed to do at the time. If I knew how useless college would ultimately be in the real world, but you can't beat yourself up.


----------



## vickyNightowl (Feb 10, 2016)

fureverywhere said:


> My little beasts...I mean offspring...would sometimes whine as adults..." You were never here!". What a frickin' cop out, I didn't have a habit...I was working full time and going to school nights and weekends plus five kids. Shoot me, I did what I could. I did what I felt I was supposed to do at the time. If I knew how useless college would ultimately be in the real world, but you can't beat yourself up.



Damb if you do and damb if you don't,lol
They should be proud not whine if you did all that!

Some are just ungrateful.


----------



## Aunt Marg (Dec 1, 2020)

Ruth n Jersey said:


> I have noticed that my kids seem to lean toward quality of time rather than quantity. I was a stay at home Mom and tried to provide both. I must admit, by the end of the  day, my nerves were a bit frazzled and quality went out the window. My kids give their children undivided attention when they are with them , go to all school functions and take them to parks etc. On the other hand, they will take short vacations by themselves, but do leave them in the hands of people they know and trust. Also have evenings out during the week. Both their kids went to day care at a very young age and then to pre school. They seem well adjusted and happy. I do notice, they don't seem to be able to entertain themselves on their own as well as my kids did and are given so many,many toys. How they raise their children is not my business and as I said they are happy little kids. Just wondering if other people have noticed this as well, and how did you raise your own kids?


I was a fulltime stay-at-home mom always, and in the same manner that my own mother raised me and my baby siblings, I mirrored the same with my own children.

I spent as much quality time with my children over the course of the day that I could (realistically), though it was busy times for sure, as spacing between my 6, meant I had two in diapers often, and between baby-care, laundry, cooking, cleaning, and whatever other miscellaneous duties called for my attention over the course of the day, I remember literally passing out when bedtime happened.

Quite often... regularly, when my oldest daughter and son were babies, my mom and/or younger sister would come over and help-out with the changing, the feeding, laundry, cooking, etc, and what a blessing that was, and then when my two daughters reached the age where they could start helping with their two baby brothers, I had both of them pitch-in, though they were exactly the same as I was at their age... excited to step up to the plate and help.

Never any daycare or pre-school for my kids, though I did have babysitters in when needed (evenings mostly), and my kids were good at occupying themselves when mommy was busy.

When the kids were playing, I did regular checkups on them to make sure all was well and that they weren't getting into trouble or doing something they shouldn't be.

I agree with you Ruth, 100%, as to my children entertaining themselves in a well-adjusted manner, the same as your children did, and I attribute that to me being the stay-at-home mom that I was. I didn't extend undivided attention to my kids from the time I lifted them out of their cribs in the morning, until I settled them back down in their cribs at the end of the day, and I always felt that was a good thing, because IMO it helps promote self-awareness and independence.

Every child (as far as I'm concerned) needs to learn how to entertain themselves outside the scope of mom or dad always being right there by their side.


----------



## Aunt Marg (Dec 1, 2020)

One thing I was absolute on, and I do mean adamantly staunch, was being a stay-at-home mom.

Dear husband knew my stance on it long before we had our first baby, and while we made a lot of sacrifices getting by on a single income, I wouldn't have had it any other way.

My philosophy was always, _make up your mind, you either want children, or you want a career, pick one._

Problem with today, people want it all, and it's the children that suffer.

I can't imagine a childhood in and out of daycare. I pity those children who suffer such, and I don't believe for an instant that a parent can make up for the lost time through the week by spending so called "quality time" with their children in the evenings and on weekends, and feel as though they've full-filled their duty to provide their children with quality time and love.

Yes, I've heard it all before, two incomes are needed today. Yes, that may be true, but if today's families learned to scale back their greedy little wants and needs and materialistic little ways, there'd be a whole lot more young and growing children enjoying one-on-one love right in the comforts of their very own homes, not in some strangers home.

Daycare has always been one of my major pet-peeves!

Chaps my bottom like nothing else!


----------

