Jay Kesler

QUESTION: I travel quite a bit in my job. Unfortunately, time with my family is very limited and it seems like the kids are growing up before I know it. Can you give me some practical suggestions on how to make our family time together a real quality time since it is so limited?

I spent a lot of time traveling - probably more than I'm really comfortable in admitting. I had to come to terms with this and how it relates to my own family and my own priorities. I've decided, first of all, that the old saying about quality time being more important than quantity time is true only in books. You can't have much quality without having some quantity.

If people could just sit down and say, "Now, I'm going to have a quality experience," that would be something, but it doesn't happen that way. In fact, I think that even in Bible study this is a problem. The Bible, of course, consists of compressed history. We have this account followed by that account. But what the Gospel writers haven't recorded is the time it takes to walk from Jerusalem to Bethany - the down moments, so to speak.

We sometimes try to live our lives as one great marvelous experience after another. It just doesn't work that way and it doesn't work in family life either. I encourage you to work on the business of more quantity. Try to carve out more time to spend with your kids. Now, if you think the competition is stiff, think about this. Surveys indicate that the typical father spends thirty-seven seconds a day in one-to-one conversation with each of his children.

Frankly, you can't pack much quality into that amount of time. Even a father who is traveling a great deal can surely do better than that, in fact much better with no trouble at all. Of course, this involves some priority choices. Many men I meet want to do it all; that is, they want to have their jobs, and those jobs involve travel.

They want to have families, but they also want to have a lot of personal time to devote to golf and other time-consuming activities. I've committed myself to spending quality time at home when I'm away from my job. Our family does things we can do together, even chores like yard care.

It helps to carve our longer periods, or chunks of time - a Saturday or Sunday afternoon - that the family can look forward to. If you plan ahead for these times so the family can become excited about them, you will see success in that area of your family. For example, if you say to your son or daughter, "A week from Sunday, we are going to do this," then the week before the event takes place becomes a time of anticipation.

You make the flavor last. It's like taking a Lifesaver and working it down to that little fine round thing on your tongue. If you've enjoyed a sense of anticipation, it's better than simply gulping it down. I also believe the traveling man has to use the phone.

I call and talk to my family each day, because when I'm on the road it's important to keep in touch. If your teens have their own cell phones, then you need to learn how to text… I know that is their world and not necessarily yours, but they will stay connected with you and communicate with you about their thoughts and feelings as much (if not more) than if you were sitting together at home in your living room.

Be determined: "This is a problem, but I'm not going to let it defeat me. I can carve out quality and quantity times for my family, and I can sure beat that national average of thirty-seven seconds."