Mama Mantra: Time In The Car Is Time Together

Posted October 25, 2019 by Prairie Wife - 2 comments

One of the necessary evils of living rurally is lots of time spent driving back and forth.

Add to that, the fact that we now have a house full of five “school-age” children and it’s safe to say that we spend at least an hour a day in the car together, if not more.

While I no longer have to drive the four oldest Cowkids to school, I still spend an hour in the car with Little Miss H taking her into preschool/daycare 4 days a week.

In the past I often used most of my drive time as phone time, meaning chatting with Ma and Pa, catching up with friends and other family members, or simply time to zone out and be “alone” with my thoughts and the tunes on the radio.

Yes, when the Cowkids were infants and toddlers I spent a lot of that time singing and tossing them snacks to keep them happy.

But, now they can pretty much entertain themselves.

While the Cowkids don’t have phones or devices in the car, they DO have books and toys.

Often during our drive time, they were ~~fighting~~ talking to each other or had their faces stuck in a book.

I realized earlier this year when I went back to work that LittleMissH and I usually had some pretty great conversations while I took her to school and back home each day.

Frankly, it was purely by accident that I learned this was the perfect bonding time.

After all, with my early hours, there wasn’t really anyone to call and talk to.

And, I missed her so much after a morning away that I actively encouraged conversation and singing together on the way home.

Soon, I realized that I needed to do the exact same thing with all of the Cowkids.

My rides home with Cowboy J after football and wrestling are the perfect time to talk about friends, school, and whatever else is going on in the world.

The girls and I chat away about anything and everything as we go back and forth to ballet each week, and the little boys sometimes just tag along to get their brother for fun and get special time with me that way.

Even when The Cowboy is driving us all somewhere I’ve begun to put my phone down and use this as the perfect time to talk about dream vacations, what our plans for the next week are, or to simply turn up the radio and sing along to some great music.

I know we often refer to being the “mommy chauffeur” in a negative way…

But what about turning it around, and thinking about it as family time together?