Magic 20

Over the years I have noticed family life becoming more and more challenging due to work pressure and living in a busy world. I used to recommend that families dedicate an hour a day to a child about 30 years ago, but as demands on our time have increased I have reduced this to just 20 minutes a day; and remarkably it has the same effect.
Introducing Magic 20, what is Magic 20?

It’s a way of connecting and meeting your child’s “ love” needs every day consistently. It calms down clinginess when consistently applied, it can help to reduce behaviour challenges and overall it connects families and restores relationships. Families will often tell me that it has had a magical impact very quickly on a variety of parenting challenges and that when they stop it they notice the difference quite quickly.
Most of children’s behaviour is a communication, an expression, their needs shouting “meet me”. We have the power to change that and lead them through by our behaviour and responses as adults and by meeting those needs daily. Children need love in a variety of ways. One way is time. Present time. Parents will often say “ but I’m there all day”, this is a different kind of “there” and its impact is greater.

Magic 20 Rules/Guidelines- it’s a great idea to create your own rules and put them up in the kitchen to refer back to sometimes.

1. Announce that every day you will get to spend 20 magical minutes together and you are really excited about it…
2. Ideally 20 minutes with each parent to maximise the effect, if you have more than one child you can swap over
3. Use a timer to set 20 minutes- a kitchen timer does the trick here as its tangible and portable
4. It’s just for you and your child- its not a time for granny on Zoom etc
5. No phones
6. No Tv/ipads
7. No distractions
8. No housework/cooking
9. No siblings
10. No Nannies
11. No doorbells
12. No agenda
13. No learning focus
14. Just a very present parent, in the moment, taking 20 minutes with their child.
15. The child chooses what you do, such as playing dollies or Lego, jigsaws, games, football in the garden etc. You can ask them if they have ideas for magic 20 ahead of time to create a feeling of anticipation.
16. No need to interact with lots of language, just gently be there
17. Try to relax and go with the flow, breath.
18. When the timer goes off thank your child and say you are looking forward to magic 20 tomorrow.
19. It can be helpful to do it at the same time every day.