Dating our Kids

After we graduated from dental school, Andy and I were listening to a talk about ways to be better parents, and the speaker, who was the father of 8 children, talked about how he and his wife started doing weekly dates with their children while they were young.  He talked about how it was initially a sacrifice to find the time, but that as each of his children grew to adulthood, he could see how many blessings came from spending the one on one time with each child, and how he and his wife's relationships with their children were so much stronger and deeper because of it. 

 

Well, that didn't take much convincing.  We set up a schedule immediately, and started taking the kids out on weekly dates.  It wasn't anything big, and we never spent a lot of money, if any at all, but what we did is spent one hour each week alone with one of our children. 

 

Then we opened our dental practice...the dates ended.  I would never have believed anyone if they would have told me that we could ever possibly be more stressed or busy than we were during our 4 years at dental school...but starting your own private dental practice with no outside private financial backing in a downed economy...yep.  That's more stressful.  Way more time-consuming and stressful.

 

Well, we have been very blessed during these past 5 years and our practice continues to grow and I don't know if the stress is any less, or if we have just learned how to shoulder it better...but we decided during our business trip last week that we needed to begin dating our children again.  So we started last Tuesday.

 

I took Lainah to the Walmart and let her choose 2 new nail polish colors...and on our way out we couldn't help but buy a beautiful bouquet of roses...

 We came back home, and I had everything set up in my bedroom to give her a manicure.  I locked the door, gave the older kids instructions that until I opened the door to pretend that we weren't home...and spent the next little while just talking with my 5 year old about her favorite things while painting her nails.

When we were done with nails, we tied some pretty ribbon around a few of the roses, and delivered them to a few ladies in our neighborhood that we thought would enjoy a pretty flower from the cutest little 5 year old ever!

At the end of the day, Lainah told me, "Mommy!  That was the BEST day ever!"  I thought so too.

And I don't have pictures, but Andy took Rachey on a date.  They went to Sonic, got shakes and then bought bike parts and went out to the garage and tuned her bike up for the season.  Simple and easy...but so great to be spending the time with each of them individually.