Joanna Fortune: I worry my young children are missing out because I'm so tired 

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My new job is stressful and demanding. I’m exhausted when I pick up my two children — aged one and three —from the childminder. Of course, they want to play with me and have cuddles but I’ve so much to do before their bedtime, I tend to give them the bare minimum — 15 minutes. They seem to be happy with this arrangement, but I feel they are missing out on a proper childhood.

This is the most common thing I hear from busy working parents in my clinical practice. It’s been said so often over the years that it formed the basis of my 15-Minute Parenting programme, advocating quality over quantity time together.

When our children greet us with pleas of ‘play with me’, they are asking us to ‘connect with me’. This is how they reunite with us after the prolonged separation of our work day and their childcare day. Too often, tired, stressed out, and depleted parents hear that request for connection as yet another demand at a point of the day when they feel they have so little to give. And so, the play feels like a chore or an obligation. But this misses the point: we will get as much out of that playful re-connection as our children. These pockets of play create moments of meeting (true connection) and are opportunities to enjoy being with each other. 

Short bursts of play will help us to exhale the stresses of our working day and regain optimal emotional arousal from which we can provide co-regulation for our children. This play isn’t just something you are doing for them but something you are doing with and for each other. 

Play is the language of children — it is how they make sense of their experiences and communicate with us about what they are thinking and feeling. Even short bursts of play each day offer a consistent, predictable experience. From what I have seen, when 15 minutes is a daily practice over weeks, children feel safe and secure in the knowledge that they can anticipate with certainty that you will come to play with them. It is this knowledge that is in and of itself regulating for them.

Our children will do so much with whatever we can give them. So don’t focus on the time you are not giving them (I would argue the time you are putting into work is also with them in mind so that you can provide a home and a good life for them with rich experiences) but focus on ensuring the 15 minutes you can give predictably every day is protected and that you are fully present and tuned into them for that time. Allow yourself to have fun, too - it will be transformative.

When you come home together before anything else happens, turn on a song (any song) and dance, all of you dancing together, wild flapping arms, swinging and spinning around. Rhythm and synchrony trigger the parts of the brain associated with emotional regulation and will help to get you back into synch literally.

Tell them you have an ‘x’ number of grown-up jobs, and then you will be free to play. Deliver on that promise. Sit and play, follow their lead and see where they want to bring you and, as the playtime is coming to an end, initiate a structured activity such as moving statues (they wiggle until you say freeze and can go again when you say unfreeze) and then follow-the-leader and gradually lead them to their bedrooms.

• If you have a question for child psychotherapist Joanna Fortune, please send it to [e-mail]