Play With Me! Why Your Child Needs Quality Time With You

By Anna (Anatta) Zarchi

Something that is often highlighted in parenting is spending time with your children, but not just time—quality time. Spending quality time with your child is beneficial to their emotional development, and our counselors at NCS often find that when children act out or misbehave, it’s because they want to spend more time with their parents. This is what many might call the classic “cry for attention”. Ignore them or tell them off and it will go away, right? Well, not really!  Of course, consequences are important, but it’s also important to get to the root cause of the issue—why are they behaving like this? Is it because they’ve never received consequences for their actions before, or is it because they are hoping you’ll give them some of your time? Let’s dig a little deeper into the importance of parent–child quality time, and how this can affect your child’s behavior and emotional well-being.  
 

Look at me

When children don’t get to spend quality time with their parents, they do things they think will get your attention so they can be with you, and more often than not, this results in misbehavior. Think about it—if you haven’t been able to spend time with your child lately and they’re not misbehaving, that means they’re fine on their own, right? If you’re busy it can be easy to ignore a child who is doing well and keeping out of trouble. But if the child does get into trouble, then you do have to pay attention. Some parents assign other people to take care of this, with the result that the child acts out even more in the hope that they will finally do something worthy of their parents’ attention. 

Not spending quality time with your child can make them feel neglected, unloved, and unwanted, and for some children, this might cause them to think that bad attention is better than no attention at all. If getting into trouble is the only way kids can get their parents’ attention, they will most likely keep doing it. Some might think that they’ll grow out of it or that it won’t impact them in any lasting way. However, NCS child therapist Savinee says not getting quality time with parents can cause “a wound or a feeling of deep hurt within children which they often harbor into adolescence and even adulthood.” This in turn can affect their relationship with themselves and others.

Emotional impacts

Let’s look at some examples: if a child grows to think of themselves as fundamentally unlovable, they might become a people pleaser, doing anything to make people love them, or they might struggle to form connections with others, as they think that they are unlikable. However this behavior manifests, their relationship with themselves is damaged, and we don’t want that! On the other hand, a child who can only get attention by being disruptive might continue to act out even in adulthood because they think this is the only way they can be seen and heard. This might be either conscious or unconscious. As mentioned in my article, “The Healthy Way to Respond to Your Child” (BAMBI Magazine July/August 2024), adults often don’t realize that certain issues they have as grown-ups stem from their childhood. These things can sometimes ingrain themselves deeply into our emotional world without us being aware of it.

What is quality time?

Now that we’ve covered the importance of spending quality time with your children, let’s consider what quality time looks like. Savinee shares this example: “If you are physically with them but typing on your phone, they might feel like you’re not actually there. Your presence itself is not enough.” Quality time means giving them your full attention—your heart has to be in it. 

The specifics of what quality time looks like can differ for each child—they might want you to play with them, tell you about their day, watch a movie together, or help you with whatever you’re doing! Ask them what they want to do to really make that quality time special, and if they just want to sit with you while you each do your own thing, then that’s fine. That might not fully fit into the definition I just gave of quality time, but that might be what your child currently needs. Perhaps they just want your comforting presence while they deal with something on their own, or maybe they just want your quiet company. This doesn’t completely replace quality time, but it’s still a form of support. Children need different things at different times, and it’s important to gauge what type of support they need in the current moment.

Build a routine

I understand that life can get busy. It’s easy to get distracted by everything else going on and to keep saying “maybe next time” to your child as you frantically try to juggle it all. Don’t worry—it happens! What you can do is be more aware of how important spending quality time with your child is so that you can make time. Getting to spend time with you means the world to them, and of course to you as you watch them grow. We recommend creating a routine where you spend at least 20–30 minutes of quality time with your child per day, and more if possible. A routine helps integrate quality time into your daily life, and if you really can’t spend time with them for some reason, explain to them why so they know it has nothing to do with them. 

When we grow up, we have a hundred different things that fill up our daily lives, but young children who are so new to the world only know their parents, school, and friends; hence they view parents as such a large part of their world, and being with you is so important to them. We encourage you to cherish every moment together—it might not seem like it, but children grow up in the blink of an eye. Treasure it!

About the Author

Anna works for New Counseling Service (NCS), the first and only licensed mental health center in the heart of Bangkok. NCS has provided counseling services in Thailand and surrounding regions for over 20 years, with therapists specializing in a wide variety of issues such as anxiety, depression, work stress, relationships, and more. 

Contact: info@ncsbkk.com; Phone: +66-2-114-7556; ncsbkk.com; FB/IG: @ncsbkk.