All work and no play makes Jack(ie) a dull parent

I have been pondering the time we give to our children. Not mine, obviously. Those belonging to other people. People who've not had to have their own children quietly adopted at an early age in an attempt to break the long run of hay-baler accidents and early inheritances.

Although I may have just said too much. Just imagine the second half of that last paragraph was hypothetical.

No, I'm talking about real children in real families. Families where kids are simultaneously held up as the only things that matter in life, and then given too little time.

Time is a genuinely limited resource with children. They get to 18 or thereabouts and they're off to university, or out into the big world - leaving behind a cupboard full of electronic toys they played with once and a pet they decided they wanted at some stage - and that's it. If you're lucky they'll nip back once a fortnight and Christmas (although if you're really unlucky they'll turn up with a load of laundry and a broken relationship and a request to move back into what you've just taken to calling "the Study"). And if you're really, really unlucky, the pet they left behind is a wolf-hound with halitosis.

But that just-short-of-two-decades is when a whole new life and personality is formed. It's an amazing time. And it's a shame if you missed it because you were at work from before getting-up time till after bedtime. Sure, some have to work long hours to make ends meet. But if those extra hours are so you can have a slightly newer car in the garage - or because you quite liked risking the stress-related breakdown because you always wanted to be CEO - then think about what you're doing. What does it profit a (wo)man if (s)he gains the whole world - but loses the sight of a childhood? You can always wait till the kids go out to work and save the nervous breakdown till then.

And it's not just work. This could be a hobby doing this, eating your time - or the squash club - or church life. Especially church life. Churches can swallow so much time. Not just the regular worship, that you all might go to as a family. But the evening groups. The music group practices. The outreach committees. The parenting courses. The Ministry Teams. The Deanery Synods and Ecumenical Groups and the sub-committees and the events planning.

Note that I'm not talking about God here - God's probably stayed at home with the kids, while you're spending an evening at the Property Committee discussing what voltage the new light bulb should be.

And you can't tell me the pastor's always there and expects "commitment" in church members. While you were still at work, the pastor was able to use the benefits of flexible time to pick up the kids from school and cook them a lovely spaghetti bolognaise. A bit like the one you bolted on your way in from work, in the ten minutes before you rushed out to Beaker Folk Together in Barnet to plan the new 17-week discipleship course "making better Christians". While the people you have the most responsibility for helping to become Christians are at home. Watching Simpsons. And thinking it doesn't reflect real life. Because Homer has his work-life-home-pub-church balance right, and spends time with his kids. And the Simpson kids don't scream when their dad comes home because they think he may be a burglar.

So I don't know where I've gone to with this. Except to say - if you can - spend more time with your children. Not "quality" time. "More" time. Except the Beaker parents, of course. You can bring Beaker kids to all Beaker events. As long as they play quietly with the antiquated and rather grubby dolls in the Kids' Holding Pen. If they won't we'd rather they stayed at home.