5 Ways to Spend More Quality Time with Your Family

My life as a working mom revolves in a constant balancing act between my career and my family. As expected, family always wins over career. Let me share with you 5 ways to spend more quality time with your family:

1) Find a family-oriented employer or a pro-family company.

One of the many factors why I switched from dental to medical line is the working time. Working in a dental clinic eats so much of my time. I used to work from 9am to 9pm (which sometimes extend all the way up to 11pm) in a dental clinic as a Clinic Coordinator and when I reach home, all I want to do is sleep and rest so that I can re-charge my energy for the next working day.

I also once worked in a dental clinic whereby I was obliged to be on on-call duty during weekends. At times, I had no choice but to leave and report for work amidst important family affairs. It was that crazy in the dental line. In my current job as Clinic Manager in the medical line, I now work from 9am to 6pm. I have been working under the same employer for almost 5 years now and never looked back with a single regret.

I am blessed to be working in a small but very family-friendly company. When one of my kids is not feeling well, my boss allows me to take under-time as long as there are no more patients booked for the day. When I feel like having a well-deserved day or half day off to spend time with the family, my boss lets me take a break too. Forever grateful for having found a workplace that lets me spend more time with my family.


2) Develop a habit of turning an ordinary family night into extraordinary.

Family night used to be just a weekend affair for us. We let the kids sleep with us in the master bedroom much later than their normal sleeping time so that we could bond with them longer. Nowadays, we also do our best to spend quality family time during weekday nights after work. We either go to the park or stay in the kids' playroom to have quality playtime with them before calling it a day and tucking them in bed. Quality playtime to us means playing with the children, not just watching them play.

You will be surprised to discover there are loads of fun waiting for you when you interact with your kids during playtime. Our kids love it when we play basketball with them using my boy's small colourful plastic balls and his tiny basketball net. The whole playroom turns into a big mess but it is filled with laughter and giggles. We also play "catch me if you can" and hide and seek around the house and we all find ourselves enjoying and laughing out loud together. An ordinary night turns out extraordinary and we all love it!

3) Date your family members one at a time.

It is sure more fun to go out with the whole family in tow but if you really wish to spend quality time with each family member, it is wiser to go an a date one at a time. My daughter loves our one-on-one girls' date. I take my own sweet time to catch up with her during our girl's day outs, something I can not do when my hyperactive toddler is with us. By dating my kids one at a time once in a while, I get to dedicate my full attention to each kid and spend more quality time with them and get to know them deeper and better.

The same thing applies for the hubby. It makes a lot of difference when I go out with him without the kids. We get to take our own sweet time eating during our foodie dates and we get to spend a quality couple time together. When we go on dates with just the two of us, there are no distractions at all hence we get to communicate really well. It is sometimes impossible to stay sweet and glued with your partner when you have kids who constantly demand your attention.

4) Opt to shop online to save more time that you can spend with your family.

Confession: I love shopping in malls especially during the Great Singapore Sale and Christmas season. I enjoy haggling great deals and steals with other thrift shoppers. The downside is, I always end up spending more time away from the kids and the hubby because I like hopping from one mall to another to make sure I get the best shopping deals in town. I have proven time and again that shopping in malls is really time consuming.

I started trying to shop online last Christmas season to avoid the human and road traffic in Orchard. Thanks to zalora.sg, I managed to save so much time and energy shopping for gifts. Needless to say, I grabbed great deals too. I can't wait to shop again  at Zalora! I am really beginning to enjoy online shopping now. I get to spend more time with the family because I now spend less time shopping! Yay!


5) Know your priorities.

Another confession: I used to accept two to three invites a week because I thought I had to grab all the opportunities laid in front of me. I thought there will no more other chances when I decline them. I was totally wrong. There will always be next time. Sounds cliche but it is true. I learned my lesson so I now accept invites that is worth my time and effort and it has to be at least once a week affair so that it doesn't eat so much of my time. On top of that, hubby and I also agreed not to surf the internet or engage in an online social media (facebook, instagram, ect) with our phones or personal computer when the kids are with us.

These are all based on my personal experiences as a full-time working mom. How about you? What do you do to spend more quality time with your family? Care to share some tips based on your family's personal experience?