11 Signs you are not spending Enough Time with Your Child

Are you spending enough time with your kids? Do you see signs that your child needs attention? Are you feeling guilty already for not paying enough attention to your children? If yes, stay with us to know more about child-attention-seeking symptoms.

Parents of modern times are busy coping with innumerable responsibilities on their shoulders. Apart from raising the kids right, they also have to cater to numerous financial and social errands. Therefore, they ultimately tend to neglect their own children who need the most of their time and attention.

Nonetheless, parents need to realize how not spending time with your child affects them. Children crave for spending quality time with their parents and develop an unbreakable bond. This not only gives them instant happiness but also helps them grow into joyous and stress-free adults.

Signs You Are Not Spending Enough Time with Your Child

1. You do not know your child:

Do you know your child’s likes and dislikes? Do you know his favorite color, toy, or food? If you do not know these basic things about your kid, this is probably a sign your child is not getting enough attention.

If you do not know what activity is your kid’s favorite, there is something surely wrong with your time management. Being a parent, you ought to know how your kid wants to spend his weekends, how he wants his birthday party to be, or how what kind of toys is his favorite ones.

2. You bestow your kid with a lot of gifts:

Parents generally tend to buy more gifts, toys, and dresses for their kids when they start feeling guilty of not being present at an important moment or event. They believe their gifts can cheer up a sad baby who missed his parents at a school event.

However, gifts or toys can never replace you and your love in your children’s lives. If you start noticing a gradual increase in such gifts to your child, you need to start spending more quality time with your kid.

3. Your baby prefers his nanny over you:

Parents who are busy with their careers employ nannies or babysitters for their kids. There is nothing wrong here because it is very difficult for a working mother to manage a baby alone while working.

However, if you notice that your baby prefers to play, eat, or bathe with his nanny and not your or your partner, then this is a serious problem. This is, in fact, one of the many signs your baby is not getting enough attention.

Babies are too small to know the difference between known and unknown. They decide this based on their instincts and experiences. Thus, if a baby prefers his nanny over his parent, it is a big warning sign you are not spending enough time with your child.

4. You Mostly See Your Baby Asleep:

Some parents are too busy to watch their kids for the whole day except for the time when they are sleeping. They probably don’t have the time to handle the toddler tantrums or patience to answer the kid’s endless questions.

Many such parents leave for their work before their child gets up in the morning and come back from their work after the kid has already slept. They see their children awake only during holidays or weekends.

Watching your kids grow in their sleep alone is very grave mistake parents do. Such parents need to immediately re-arrange their priorities, start spending more time with their children, and then notice the benefits of spending time with their child.

5. Your elder child shows hatred towards the younger one:

It is quite common for the elder child to feel left out after the arrival of the younger ones. However, if this feeling of being ignored grows in the mind of the elder baby and stays with him for 4-5 years, it might gradually convert to hatred for their younger sibling.

Parents love all their children equally. Nonetheless, sometimes unknowingly parents do tend to ignore the elder sibling when the younger one is born. Parents should see to it that the elder child shouldn’t feel left out in front of the younger ones. They should try spending individual time with each child, especially the elder one as the younger one might already be receiving all the attention in the family.

If you notice some initial symptoms of feeling ignored in your toddler, treat it as one of the signs your toddler needs more attention. Start spending some alone time with your toddler too. Most parents who have two kids wonder how to give both kids equal attention. However, if you sneak out some time for your elder one while the younger one is sleeping or playing with a grandparent, it can do all the magic.

6. You don’t know your child’s friends:

Has it ever happened to you that you suddenly see an unknown kid at your home who is apparently your child’s best friend? If yes, reduce investing your time in your career and diverge it to your child right away.

For babies, parents are their whole world. When they grow up and expand their world, they always want their parents’ full participation in their newer and bigger worlds. Hence, if you do not know your child’s friends, peers, competitors, or teachers, this is certainly a strong sign that your child needs your attention.

7. You don’t know how your kids’ perform at school:

If feedback from a school teacher of your child turns out to be a surprise, good or bad, for you, it isn’t a good symptom. Usually, parents who spend time with their kids know them inside out. When a teacher praises or complains about their children to such parents, it comes as an obvious thing rather than a surprise.

However, if you find the feedback of your kids surprising or in other words, you do not know how your kid is performing at his school, you need to check your priorities. Do not neglect your kids so much so that you are not even aware when your child starts following a different path.

8. You Don’t Remember Your Last Family Trip:

If it has been very long when you last went on a trip with your family and spent a good time together, it is a sign you are not spending enough time with your child. It doesn’t necessarily mean a trip to another country or town, it could also be a fun-filled weekend. What is important is to spend some quality time as a family.

Isn’t it fun to have a play-date with your toddler in the mud or paint something weird? How about taking your child to an amusement park or water park and spend a day full of entertainment? Won’t you enjoy a coffee date with your teenage kid and discuss his or her crush at the school?

We surely do not want our kids to have memories of busy parents surrounded by electronic gadgets all the time. It is our responsibility, as parents, to give our children an awesome childhood full of beautiful memories.

9. You get to know your child’s secrets from strangers:

How would you feel if some stranger tells you that your kid had suffered an injury in his school last week but he didn’t inform you? How would you feel if your child’s friends tell you that your child failed in a class test?

Parents are not accustomed to knowing about their children from strangers. It not only hurts them to the chore but also takes them on a guilt trip of not being with their kid when they needed them the most.

Therefore, parents should see to it that they spend some quality time with their children at least once a week so that their children share their secrets with their parents directly.

10. Your teenager child is always angry with you:

Teenage is an age of immense hormonal and emotional changes. Every human being goes through countless physical, mental and emotional issues. Therefore, at this age, children tend to become frustrated or irritated with many things.

Showing frustration on some days is absolutely fine. However, if you feel your child is almost always angry with you or annoyed while talking to you, it’s time you dig more into his heart. On the contrary, if your child has suddenly become unusually sad, depressed, or silent, it is again a matter of concern.

Your teenage child is either very disappointed in you or has lost all hopes of reviving a parent-child bond between you too. It is just that he is realizing those things and the emotional reactions are surfacing now. Hence, it’s time for that long-procrastinated coffee date with your grown-up kid to reassure him that his parents are genuinely concerned for his emotional and physical turmoil.

11. Your child’s go-to person is not you:

As kids grow, their world expands from only parents to friends, peers, colleagues, teachers, friend’s parents, etc. It is good to be social and interact with scores of people. However, if you think your child has started confiding in someone else, other than you, it is a sign you are not spending enough time with your child.

This simply means that your lack of attention has made him talk to someone else. That someone-else, however, may or may not be trustworthy and reliable. Nevertheless, as a kid, your child will not understand this and will share all his secrets with that stranger. This might even pose a risk for your child.

Therefore, if you suspect that your child loves to spend most of his time in talking to someone else or does not want to discuss his school, studies, friends, career options, etc. with you, it is high time you should re-prioritize your diary.