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A December Note from Jill ❄️

Have you started your holiday shopping?  When thinking about gifts for their children, many parents (myself included way back when!) buy gifts by asking one question:

Will my child like this?  Or  Will this keep them busy?

Very few ask the more important question:  Will this help us enjoy our time together? 

Parents often assume there will always be time for connection later. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the research says otherwise.  Long-term time-use studies show:

• By age 12, kids start spending more hours with friends than with parents.
• By age 18, you have already used up 80 to 90% of all the in-person time you will ever have with your child.  I know -- so sad!
• After 18, if they live nearby, you may see them 2–4 hours per week.
• If they move a short distance away, it often becomes 1–2 hours per month.
• If they move out of state, it’s usually 1–2 times per year.
• Across the rest of adulthood, most parents get only 300 more hours total with their child. That is less than two full weeks, stretched across five or six decades.

This is why connection in the early years matters.  The window is shorter than it feels.

Shared play and shared experiences now create memories, skills, and emotional security that last far beyond childhood.

During early childhood, the brain fires roughly one million neural connections per second during active, engaged play. You read that correctly -- ONE MILLION PER SECOND!   Emotional, social, language, and motor networks activate at the same time. Your child is learning, regulating, communicating, and bonding all at once.

Conversely, when a child is passively watching a screen:
• Neural firing drops dramatically
• Far fewer brain systems activate
• Learning is shallow
• Memory does not consolidate in the same way
• Co-regulation does not happen
• The brain gets stimulation, not relationship

These two experiences are not equivalent.  They do opposite things.

When you join your child in play, your nervous systems sync. You smile, they smile. You lean in, they lean in. Their brain pairs joy and safety with you.

Cells that fire together wire together.  Shared play wires connection into the relationship.

It fills both of your buckets.

It reduces attention-seeking and power struggles because you are giving the connection before they have to ask for it in harder ways.

So this year, choose gifts with intention.
Instead of “What will keep them occupied?”
shoot for “What will help us enjoy our time together?”

Ideas that build connection and learning:
• Play-Doh, crayons, simple art supplies
• Pretend play sets you can join
• Kid-safe kitchen tools for cooking together
• Books you enjoy reading aloud
• Outdoor items that support movement and exploration

Just remember, your time is the real gift.

All my best,
Jill, The Mentor Mom