How To Make Sure Each Kid Gets Enough One-On-One Time When You Have Multiple Kids: Parenting Tips That Fit A Busy Schedule
Last Tuesday, I was mid-fold of a mountain of bath towels when three requests hit me at once. Seven-year-old Lila was tugging my wrist, begging me to help her add a turret to her Lego fairy castle. Four-year-old Jax had climbed on top of the laundry basket, screaming that he needed me to read his dinosaur pop-up book right now. Ten-year-old Mia hovered by the fridge, holding the math test she’d aced, her thumb picking at the edge of the paper. I sighed and told them all to give me five minutes. By the time I finished the towels, Mia was gone, the test tucked back into her backpack and never mentioned again. That’s when I knew my old system for one-on-one time wasn’t working.
I’d bought into the common advice that every kid needs a monthly special date—dinner out, a movie, one whole day just for them. It sounded great on paper, but our lives never fit. Mia’s cross country practices got moved, Jax woke up with a fever the day Lila was supposed to go get ice cream, half the time I ended up canceling one kid’s date to cover something for another, and I’d leave feeling guiltier than when I started. The big dates also left huge gaps between them: three and a half weeks where the quiet kid got pushed to the side because the louder kids demanded my attention every night.
I didn’t overhaul my whole schedule to fix it. I just started looking for the gaps of time that were already there, instead of trying to carve out new ones. Mia gets home from middle school 10 minutes before the younger two get dropped off at our door from elementary. I used to spend that 10 minutes answering work emails or loading the dishwasher. Now I leave the dishes, leave my phone on the counter, and sit on the front porch with her. I don’t quiz her on homework or nag her about her messy room. I just ask her what the dumbest thing that happened today was, and let her talk. Some days she rants for 10 minutes about her science teacher’s weird socks. Some days she just scrolls TikTok with me and shows me funny cat videos. It’s only 10 minutes, but it’s 10 minutes where it’s just her.
Jax is the kid who follows me everywhere, so I stopped asking him to go play by himself while I do chores. When I’m washing dishes or folding laundry, I give him a small job that’s just his: he sorts all the socks by color, or dries the silverware with a faded dishtowel. We talk the whole time, mostly about which dinosaur would win in a fight against a giant robot. It’s not fancy, it doesn’t require any extra planning, and it’s 15 minutes of just us, every single day. I don’t have to rearrange my to-do list to make it happen.
Lila’s window comes after Jax goes to bed. He’s in bed by 7:30, and Lila doesn’t have to be in until 7:45, and Mia’s usually in her room doing homework or talking to her friends. That 15 minutes is just ours. We brush our teeth side by side, then sit on her bed and look through her sticker album, or she braids my hair while I tell her a silly made-up story about a fairy who hates baking cookies. No interruptions, no one pulling at my sleeve.
Two months ago, Jax got hand, foot, and mouth the week of Lila’s 7th birthday. Her party got canceled, her grandparents couldn’t come, and we were stuck inside the house for five days. I thought she’d be miserable, but that night after Jax fell asleep, we did our 15 minutes, and she told me it was the best birthday week she ever had. She said no one was fighting for my attention the whole time, because we still had our little bits every day. That’s when I realized it was working.
The biggest thing I learned is that one-on-one time doesn’t have to be long to count. A 10-minute conversation with no phone is better than a two-hour outing where you’re checking work emails every five minutes. Kids can tell when your attention is split, even if they don’t say it out loud. I also don’t stress about making every day equal. Some days Mia has a cross country meet, so she gets 20 minutes after talking about her race, and Jax only gets 5 minutes sorting socks. It all balances out over a week. When all three of them demand my attention at the same time, I don’t try to split myself three ways. I just name who’s next, out loud: “I’m helping Jax tie his boots right now. Lila, I’ll look at your drawing in two minutes, I’m putting this sticky note on it so I don’t forget.” That’s way better than saying “just wait” because they know I’m actually going to come back, not forget.
I still mess up. Last week I had a work call that ran over, and I missed Mia’s 10 minutes on the porch. She didn’t say anything, but I noticed she was quiet all through dinner. After the dishes were done, I grabbed my keys and asked her if she wanted to walk to the gas station for a soda. We walked around the block for 12 minutes, just talking, and that was that. You don’t have to be perfect, you just have to make it up when you mess up.
I still see those posts online about how parents should plan whole weekends of one-on-one time with each kid, and I just scroll past. That’s not my life. My life has a pile of unfolded laundry on the couch most nights, and forgotten permission slips, and soccer practice that runs late. Right now, this system works for us. I don’t know if it’ll work when Mia gets older and wants more privacy, or when Jax starts middle school and needs more time. For now, though, no one’s hiding their A test in their backpack anymore, and that’s enough.
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