Monday, August 10, 2009

Quality Time vs Quantity

One of the great things about DH’s job and the new house is that we have time together. We usually now are able to have breakfast and dinner together. Occasionally, we even pop over for lunch. After over a year of him commuting over 3 hours a day, this has truly been a God send to our family. I have often argued that you cannot have quality time if you don’t have quantity. I think as a society we have fooled ourselves in this debate to nullify our guilt about not having enough time together. Quality time is not necessarily something you can identify until after you’ve had the time together. I think some people believe quality time is when you plan special time together with your children i.e. Six Flags, the beach, a show, but I can tell you that some of the highest quality time I have had with my children and with my husband has come during the most mundane tasks.

Today for example, during breakfast we had a great conversation about how life has changed since we were children and certainly since our parents were children. Things like body wash vs. bars of soap, which somehow led to a conversation of hairspray, and then smoking. Smoking led to the Marlboro Man, who of course the kids had never heard of. So we pulled out the computer and found this on YouTube.




The kids were amazed that smoking was so prevalent. We were sure to mention during this conversation that the viral, manly, independent Marlboro Man died of lung cancer. It was a very interesting advertising conversation and one of the many conversations that I’m sure we will have on the subject of smoking.

You can only have quality time, if you have quantity.

You can only get to the important conversations of life, if you make the time to talk.

1 comment:

MrsMomma said...

We enjoy quality time as well, but as you've experienced, my hubby's job gets in the way of quantity at times. Hoping and praying that one day that will change. :)

I love using youtube for finding 'blasts from the past' like that to show the kiddos. Last year DD wrote about Daniel Boone and she learned that he was really a small man and did not wear a coonskin cap but how most people had the misconception that he was "a big, big man, with a coonskin cap" la la la.. So I checked out youtube for Hollywood's version of Daniel Boone. DD thought they were silly for not getting the facts right.