A Psychologist Revealed a 3-Minute Rule That All Parents Should Follow

How much time do you spend with your child after work? Technically, we only need about 30 minutes to cook dinner for them, about 15 minutes to read a book, and just a moment to kiss them good night. However, according to experts, among all these periods, there are 3 minutes that can be the most important of the day. Psychologist Nataliya Sirotich explained the rule of 3 minutes and according to her, if you follow this rule, you will have your child’s trust even when they are teenagers.

Bright Side decided to find out how to use these 3 minutes correctly to reach a level of complete and total understanding with a child, and it turned out to be pretty easy!

The rule of 3 minutes

This rule says that you have to meet your child every day as if you haven’t seen each other for a long time (even if you haven’t seen each other for 5 minutes while you were away at the store.)

Besides, it’s very important to be on the same level as the child’s eyes and spend 3 minutes hugging the child and asking them what happened while you were away. It’s especially important to follow this rule when you pick up your child from the kindergarten, school, or when you come back home from work.

Why it’s necessary

According to the psychologist, during the very first minutes after you see your child, they tell you all the information they can remember.

The consequences of ignoring the rule of 3 minutes can vary, depending on the character of the child. Someone who doesn’t have a chance to tell everything to the parents when they can won’t talk about very important things and over time, some facts will seem not important enough to even talk about them. In this case, parents might miss a lot of really important things.

Other children will keep talking the entire evening, recalling new facts every time and in the end, they will have a complete story. The parents of such a child have a risk of not hearing a lot of things too, because, for them, a speaking child will eventually become just background noise.

Additional recommendations

It’s important to note that the rule of 3 minutes doesn’t mean that you should spend only 3 minutes a day with your child. It only means that you must spend 3 minutes with the child right after you’ve met them to make sure you hear everything that is important for the child to tell you.

Also, to reach a level of complete understanding with your child, you can follow these recommendations from psychologists:

• Spend some time every day to do something that you and the child are interested in together.
• Let your kids understand that you hear them. For example, you can repeat the information you’ve heard from your child to make sure you understood everything correctly.
• Don’t demonstrate fake excitement.
• Return to the conversations a bit later, let them know that you remember what they talk to you about.
• Avoid long and useless arguments even if they are about something completely obvious for you. Just tell your child, “OK, I understand that you disagree with me.”

How do you spend your time with your child? Maybe you follow the rule of 3 minutes on an intuitive level and always listen to everything that they have to say? Tell us in the comment section below!