As my girls get older they get wiser to what quality time can be. I suppose it’s like their vocabulary is getting bigger and they want to spend it in more ways than what they used too.

Before I did a parenting course I would spend time with the girls, but not really quality time, the reason I know it wasn’t quality time is because they were more demanding afterwards.

If you can imagine your child as a bottle and quality time being the formula, I wasn’t really filling the bottle to the top which meant it ran out faster and they’d keep coming back for top ups, which for me felt like they were being needy and annoying.

When I first met Elizabeth and did my first parenting course based on The Five Love Languages I was challenged to try and spend quality time with my girls, one to one and with no distractions. With the TV off, computer off, and phone off. This was so hard. It was 2009. Cell phones and computers and laptops were much easier to get, plus we had Sky and a PlayStation 2. Can you imagine how hard it was, I felt like I had waiting all my life for technology to get to this stage and I had to force myself to ignore it.

Luckily we only had to practice 20 minutes per day. I had to make a plan to make sure this happened. Number One was Bath time. I would bath them one at a time to get that one on one time. Number Two was painting nails. I remember my darling asking me what I was doing. I said painting nails. She said you don’t paint nails like that. It was messy but fun.

Last was First Aiding. I hated them wasting plasters so turning that into a game made things so much easier. I began to enjoy spending time with me girls, they were less demanding of me because they had full tanks and overtime it became easier for me to put the controller down or the laptop and the controller and be there for my girls when they needed top ups.