When my daughter was in middle school and high school our daily schedule was insane. She had school during the day and I had work. When we got home, she would do homework, and I would mow, or wash the dishes, or do whatever chore that had been most neglected during the past week. After that, we would rush to dance practice, eating before if we had time, or grabbing something on the road if we didn’t. There were meetings at school, work commitments some nights, projects, church, sleepovers, and that was a slow week. We were so busy getting everything done, that we rarely had time to just be together.

Your weeks may look like mine, or they may be even more chaotic. There are a thousand opportunities out there for our kids and for us. We love our kids, and so we want them to be able to be part of everything that we are told is important. After all, we are working on making that college application look good (even when our kids are in seventh grade). The result of all of our running and multi-tasking is that our kids are graduating high school experientially rich but relationally poor.

Relationships take time, and there are no shortcuts if we want to have deep relationships with the people closest to us. It’s easy to fill our life with so many good things that we don’t have time for the best things. Here are a couple of thoughts about how to trade experiences for relational depth:

Embrace the Boredom

If you looked at our planners, you would assume that our greatest fear in life is for our children to become bored. Boredom is not the enemy, at least not in small doses. We shouldn’t  strive to entertain our kids during every minute they are awake. They need space to be bored. Oftentimes that is when their creativity and self-reliance blooms.

Start with One No

It’s hard to say “no”. We don’t want to miss out on anything, and we don’t want our kids to miss out either. You don’t have to cancel everything on your calendar to improve your relationships, you just need to pick one place where you can say “no”. By saying no to one activity or commitment, you are saying yes to the time required for relationships to grow. Sit down with your calendar and find your one place to say “no”.

Make Room To Breathe

We can’t gain relational depth by simply adding it to the unending list of other things we want to get done in a week. You can plan to have a deep, life-changing talk with your teenager this week if you want, but it may or may not happen. Trust and relational health can’t be forced. They must be given space to grow. Open up time for conversations to happen. If it takes ten open windows of time to have one deep conversation with your spouse or child, you are still being successful.

Trading experiences for relational depth isn’t always easy. Slowing down can be stressful at first. Stay committed to creating spaces for your relationships to breathe however, and you will see growth and depth over time.