By Jenny Holden

I’m fascinated by the subject of time. 

Once a terrible time keeper, I’ve invested a lot of prep and reading into being much better, and I think I’ve improved a little.

But as my children have grown older, now 11 as I write this, they don’t want or need me as much and that had me thinking – how long do we all really spend with each other as we move through life?

Of course, who we spend time with evolves across our lifetimes. In adolescence, our children spend most of their time with parents, siblings and friends, and as we enter adulthood, we spend more time with work colleagues and partners.

But what has shocked me most is research by National Family Week which found that:

I say shocked. I wasn’t really when looking at our own chaotic family dynamic. Dominated by tech in every direction, our conversations are mostly transactional without really having proper conversations – and days out together are few and far between due to wanting to save the pennies a bit.

Those in nuclear families, single-parent families, extended families, childless families, step families and grandparent families are also often in the same situation. It therefore seems that we’re sometimes putting our nearest and dearest at the bottom of our lists of things to do.

So, here at Lichfield Living HQ we’d love to find a couple of families who are up for a challenge. One that doesn’t cost any money, just a bit of feedback for our next issue.