At the end of April 2022, a talk show program themed “30 minutes of quality time per day to be friends with your children” was organized by the Your Dreams project’s organisers of the Da Nang Junior Chamber International (JCI) in collaboration with MNP Education Joint Stock Company, Ha Noi, to help parents better interact with their children, thereby accompanying their children in the process of development and maturation.

A representative of organizers gave flowers to experts attending the talk show “30 minutes of quality time per day to be friends with your children” Photo: DAN TAM

According to experts participating in the program, parents cannot help but spend 30 minutes with their children every day no matter how busy they are. According to Ms Nguyen Thu Hien, professional advisor of MNP Education Joint Stock Company,  parents do not need to strive to achieve 30 minutes of continuous quality time every day but should divide the time to care and talking with their children.

Parents can have a chat with their children about what happened at school while picking them up or preparing meals together. Parents can encourage, acknowledge, reward their children or read stories with them before bedtime. For older children, parents can exchange and share lesson content or listen to some of their favourite songs with them. These are also ways to help parents and children have a stronger bond and understand each other better every day.

Mr Nguyen Van Tu, National Guide of the program "Positive Discipline in Daily Parenting" of the Save the Children organisation, acknowledged that 30 minutes a day is not much, but enough for parents to have time to talk, share, and be friends with their children. During these 30 minutes, parents should try to put themselves in their children's shoes, listen and observe to understand what their children want, thereby building reasonable activities with them.

As shared by Mr Tu, he has consulted loads of cases where parents lost connection with their children. In these cases, most parents were busy with work and did not have time to care for their children. This somehow leads to children looking to social networks to share and gradually preferring social networks to chatting with parents. Consequently, children who lose connection with their parents don't like to talk to their parents.

They come home from school, then stay in their room and close the door, or even run away from home. In these cases, families need to care for and talk to their children more often, especially parents who need to accept the difference between generations to share with their children.

Nowadays, it is not only difficult for parents to interact and be friends with their children, but it is also hard for children to interact and be friends with their parents. For children, cyberspace is a colourful world while it is also a place for parents to entertain or continue unfinished work. It is the exposure to technology too much that makes both children and adults withdraw themselves and have no need to talk to each other.

Therefore, there is no other way that parents have to care more about their children by talking to them about the topics they are interested in to have a bond with them. This is because when parents immerse themselves in their children's world, they will understand, sympathize, share and be friends with their children.

‘Your Dreams’ project is aimed at child beneficiaries. In 2022, the project will carry out numerous discussion activities and produce short films related to children, especially children with autism.

As part of that series of activities, the talk show "30 minutes of quality time per day to be friends with children" aims to spread the right knowledge and skills to interact with children, and help parents understand their children better, thereby accompanying them in the process of development and maturation”, said Mr Le Van Day, Project Director of ‘Your Dreams’ for the term 2022.

Reporting by DAN TAM- Translating by T.VY