Quiet Time

I want to talk about Quiet Time.

This is not to be confused with my Mom Time.

(and it is so important to me, that I'm skipping over exercise time to talk about it!)

When I was just starting out on this parenting journey, I was lucky enough to have an older sister with kids older than mine.

She was a gold mine of information.

But, the number one nugget she gave me was the idea of "Quiet Time".

Every day, there is a time set apart for it.

The rule is, it must be spent in your room and you can't come out until the time is over.

When I first started this, we did only a 15 minute quiet time.

And there was some crying and door holding to get it to happen.

They could do what they wanted in quiet time as long as they cleaned up afterwards.

At the beginning, it would usually turn in to nap time.

As they got used to the idea, we gradually increased the time.

And as more kids came along, there was less quiet and more messy  creative play.

It became 30-60 minutes of my day that I looked forward to having some down time.

Life saver!!


We'd gone away from quiet times in our home.

My kids are older and not around that much anyway.

That is until now.

We are home together all the time.

And Quiet Time is back!


My kids complained a lot at first.

"We have to do an hour and a half of quiet time every day!!??!!"

"What are we supposed to do for that long??!!!"

Guess what?

It's saving our lives again!!

This time, everyone has to spend that time alone.

There's not many naps (though there have been some).

There's a lot of reading.

And a lot of creativity happening. (though no music is allowed - because quiet, right?)

I believe my kids are getting along a lot better with each other, because they have some alone time every day.

They play better together when they are together because they are not together all the time. Ha!

I usually end up working during that time.

Or just enjoying the peace.

If you are just starting out, don't expect perfect results at first.

We did the work to get to this.

But, it is worth the effort to get something like this in place.

Life saving, I tell you!

Thanks Pam.