How much time do you need to spend with your children?Here's a great mathematical answer I found on a homeschooling website.
"When a baby is born, before he's a year old, spend 23 hours a day with him, or thinking about him, or sleeping with him, or carrying, or feeding him.
When he turns one, spend 22 hours a day with him (and gradually less). For two hours you might be in the shower or sleeping without knowing you're asleep.
Let that time slide at a steady pace until he's ten or eleven, and you're spending half of it, twelve hours, with him, on him, in his presence, doing things for or with him. Steadily slide that back until he's 20 and then one hour a day is plenty.
No cheating. If you aren't diligent in the early years, the 20 year old will be gone in a huff or might have slunk away sadly."
5 comments:
Does it seem strange that I find 23 hours a day 'a bit much' to spend with you newborn? I guess that would mean that you would have to sleep with them in your bed, and wear a sling pretty much all day. Even 10-12 hours with a 10 year old seems A LOT, whether you are homeschooling or not.
I think this lady is coming from an attachment parenting point of view, and yes, would probably share beds and do slings etc. Perhaps it's just 'being available' to the baby 23 hours a day... which I think any mother of a newborn would be.
I don't think she's talking about being in a ten year old's face for 12 hours a day.. but certainly being available and engaged and interested from the time they wake up to when they go to bed would be necessary.
I don't know about that - there needs to be space for mother to breathe so that she can be "properly" available.
If you're totally stressed out, even a newborn can sense that, and it doesn't help either of you. You can sometimes be better invested in your children when you have healthy rest time away from them.
I'm a little concerned about the threatening tone of the last paragraph in the quote. It seems to suggest that if you don't spend 23 hours invested in your newborn they're going to rebel on you. No parent wants that to happen.
What happens with other siblings?
Sounds completely exhausting. What about a good night's kip?
I read an interesting book today about baby slings and the connection they bring between mother and baby. Personally, if I have another baby, I'll be trying it. I would rather not do controlled crying. As for sleeping in the same bed, we already have one, if not two regular little visitors to our bed at night, and I think it's wonderful. I wanna be a hippie.
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