Have you ever sat down and taken inventory of your kids time? How much “free” time they have in a day?
I honestly hadn’t either. So, when I felt God nudging me to do it, I did. I sat down and wrote out what a general 24 hour day would look like for our kiddos…
They start off with 24 hours in a day:
- 10 hours sleep
- 8 hours in school [including transportation]
- 1 hour getting ready for school [dressed, teeth, lunches, breakfast, chores, etc.]
- 30 minutes homework after school [reading, projects, math, etc.]
- 30 minutes screen time [yes, we time this!]
- 1 hour play inside/outside time
- 2 hours sports/extracurricular activities [including travel time, sometimes]
- 30 minutes getting ready for bed [pj’s, teeth, prayers, snuggle time, etc.]
- = 0 hours, 30 minutes left. [if that doesn’t shake you up a bit, I don’t know what will!]
30 minutes of free time in your kiddos day left. That’s it. And if you have elementary to middle school age kiddos at home too, no doubt your schedule looks a lot like this one! Maybe yours is a little better off or a little worse off. Do you see how easily, on any given day, ALL of our time can be taken up?!
Every single hour, who am I kidding…every single MINUTE matters!
Did you notice, there is zero time allocated for teaching your kids about Jesus in the above schedule. It should be a priority! I know, the current state of our homes are…BUSY. Less than 1% of our kids time, and most likely our time, is left “free”.
Let me encourage you, I had to start somewhere. Making time in your schedule is half the battle! It’s hugely important we are talking to our kids all day, every day, about Jesus…and I also believe it’s important to make TEACHING our kids about Jesus a priority too. Because, let’s be honest, if we don’t schedule it and make it a priority…most likely, it won’t get done.
I’m going to be talking the next few months on here about the importance of teaching our kiddos about Christ at home, I hope you’ll join me! I’m going to be sharing things the Lord has taught me, along with scriptures he used to change the way I do things…and the fruit is everlasting friends. It’s eternal!
John 15:16 - “You didn’t choose me. I chose you. And appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit…”