Time alone with each child

The activity

A regular time with each of your children on their own, doing something they choose. Keep it short enough to protect every week.

What it is for. It’s hard for brothers and sisters to share their parents’ attention. A child who can count on time that is theirs alone has less reason to fight over the time that has to be shared.

• The first step. Find a slot for each child that you can keep: fifteen minutes after the youngest is in bed, the walk to Saturday swimming, breakfast out once a month with a teenager. Put each one in the diary.

Safety. Make the time when another adult is in the house or the youngest is asleep. Don’t leave a young child on their own to free up time for another.

When to get help. If your child has hurt themselves, or talks about not wanting to be alive, stay calm, thank them if they have told you, don’t promise to keep it secret, and act that day: help them ask the surgery for an urgent appointment, and if it is closed, use the routes under “If you need help right now”, at the foot of every page. If your child tells you that someone is hurting them, stay calm, thank them for telling you, don’t promise to keep it secret, and act that day, using those routes; if the person hurting your child lives in your home or your child’s other home, go straight to children’s social care or the police. If your child is badly hurt, or may have taken too much of a medicine, get medical help straight away, even if they seem well. If one child is regularly hurt or frightened by a brother or sister, step in each time and make sure that child is safe, and talk to your GP or their school if it goes on. If a child becomes withdrawn or anxious, stops talking to you or falls behind at school for several weeks, talk to their school and your GP.

The other four steps, and your part in it, are in the library.

The sheet that goes with it comes with a subscription: Time alone with each child.

It goes with

• Siblings and the Fights That Aren’t Fair. For parents whose children keep finding new ways to fall out with each other.
• When They Stop Talking to You. For parents whose teenager hardly talks to them any more.

The first chapter you open here is free to read in full.

Free on this subject

• Sibling conflict. What to do first, what helps, and who else can help. Free to read and to print.
• Attachment. What to do first, what helps, and who else can help. Free to read and to print.