The recent events around the world has, once again, reaffirm my belief that we are living on borrowed time here on earth and everything can be easily taken away from us. We keep ourselves so busy with other activities that sometimes, we sacrifice quality time that should be spent with our kids.

Even without all these threats of disasters and crisis, it must be every parent’s objective to really be able to bond with their children. Because, before you know it, the kids are all grown up and you would have missed the chance to get to know them.

Here are a few helpful points to spending quality time with your young ones especially when everything around you is buzzing with activity:

Take a special time in the day to just focus on one child each. Maybe during breakfast, you and the youngest can talk about what they’re expecting from their day over cereals. And then take after dinners as a time to sit and chat with the elder kids. Just focus on them, allow them to share what they wanna share, even if it’s as trivial as one kid crying in class. Make sure to keep this special times as regular as possible.

Have date nights or date weekends with each of your child. I know one parent who takes her eldest to the nail spa every 2nd Saturday of the week, while the other child has a date with his mother every fourth Saturday of the week. This way the kids will have something to look forward to. Keep this dates and appointments all the time.

Bonding with your children is really important even if you’re busy. Parents have to make time to get to know their kids.

What’s your special bonding ritual with your kids? And how often do you do this?

This idea works for everyone, because it really doesn’t have anything to do with Easter.  And even if you don’t celebrate Easter, or you’ll celebrate it this coming Sunday instead of yesterday, the ingredients for this activity are cheap and will soon be cheaper, as egg-coloring kits go on clearance all over. 

Kids love to color and decorate eggs.  They make intricate designs with that white wax crayon, then wait patiently while holding an egg half in one color, only to turn it and hold it patiently half in another color.  And if your house is anything like ours, your kids like to color hard-boiled eggs much more than they like to eat them. 

But seeing how cheap eggs, vinegar, and dyeing kits are, why not stock upon these supplies and color some eggs at other times of the year, too?  For example, if you only use the red and blue tablets, you can have red, white and blue eggs for Independence Day.  Then if, kids don’t eat them, you can make egg salad or deviled eggs from them for that family picnic. 

How about orange and green colored eggs for Halloween?  Brown and yellow for Thanksgiving?  Red and green for Christmas?  Purple and pink for Valentine’s?  Purple and green for Mardi Gras?  Even if they don’t eat them all, you still haven’t spent very much money, and they get potentially hours of enjoyment decorating them. 

So, the next time you’re at the store, pick up a few of those egg coloring kits on clearance.  Pull them out in the middle of summer for some special occasion, or for now reason at all.  It will give your kids a creative, inexpensive activity, and bring a little more color into everyone’s life.