If you have an 11 year old how much time did you spend with them today?

[Brunchorlunch]

I always feel hugely guilty for not spending more time with my kids given I work full time. Tonight I’m exhausted and wanted to go to bed just before 9 but felt so guilty that I haven’t seen my 11 year old much today so I stayed up and watched tv with him.

How much time are you actually with your 11 year old on a weekend day? Like chatting or doing activities? I feel these is increasingly less time we are actually interacting.

Today our interaction was limited to the following. The rest of the time he was either in the park playing, in his room playing pro fighting with his older sisters. Is this normal? If you do no were then what do you do to keep them engaged now they don’t play or do crafts etc? All we did was:

• chat for ten mins while he got ready in the morning before i went to the gym
• drove together for 20 mins to a football match chatting, watched him play for an hour, drove him home
• Played cards with him and DH for 45 mins on return
• Chatted to the whole family for 40 mins over dinner but his older sisters are loud so that was not a lot of him chatting
• watched tv silently together for an hour just now

It's quite normal. Please dint worry. Honestly it gets worse. He will spend most of his time online or out with his friends in the next few years you will hardly see him..apart from cooking and taxi ing

Today from when I got up till about 11 maybe

Then from 7 to bed time

But that's just because next door was available to play with. That's always a bigger appeal for her! If she's not available then yes we spend a lot of time together

PurpleMe what do you do when you are together to keep her interested?

That's quite normal in our house. I don't know that I actually spent as much time as that yesterday

I've found this more and more with my 12 year old. She doesn't really watch tv so I can't even sit with her. Yesterday we walked to a local café and had a smoothie and shared a sandwich. I've come to realise we need to be out of the house to spend any meaningful time together.

I think PP is spot on, meaningful time tends to happen outside of the house when they get older, too many other things (tv, devices, toys, even homework!) to do when in the house

Friday night we watched a film together on the sofa and yesterday we spent a couple of hours in the car together going to various places and also went for a walk. She wasn’t happy about the walk though!

I actually think the car time is quite valuable and shouldn’t be dismissed. We listen to music together which we both enjoy.

Loads of things. We play games. Board games, card games etc. We might paint sometimes. Draw. Play Barbies (rarely do that together). She likes me to watch her on slide and trampoline sometimes. We might go out swimming, soft play (yes she still likes that and it won't last much longer so I take her sometimes). Go out on bike (she's less enthusiastic about that but likes it when we do it). Watch Tele. Play on switch (rarely). I guess mostly we play board games/card games together if we're in.

But mine has never been one to be by herself to be honest. She's never got the hang of it

DD is just 12 and yesterday I probably spent about 2 hours with her, an hour while she got ready for her rehearsal and an hour after. Today she’s still in bed at present but we’re going to go shopping then watch a film tonight, so a fair bit more.