Do You Know Who Your Child Is One-on-One?
For anyone who prefers listening to reading, this AI-generated audio (created with Google NotebookLM) offers a gentle summary of the key ideas in my blog.
I was recently invited by Geno La Placa to join her for an Instagram Live about our upcoming Branch Out ♡ Ola Thanksgiving Parent & Child Retreat, Coming Home to Each Other, this Thanksgiving in El Pescadero, Mexico. She so generously invited Anna and me to share the retreat with her community, and her very first question was:
Why this retreat?
Such a good question. And the answer came to me immediately.
Because I believe there is something incredibly important, and often overlooked, about creating a relationship with each of our children one-on-one.
Not just as a family. Not just Mom, Dad, siblings, dog, dinner reservations, and everyone trying to agree on what to do next.
Just you and your child.
The relationships living inside the family
We put so much energy into keeping the family together. And that is beautiful. We plan family dinners, family vacations, family movie nights, weekend outings, holidays, and trips. We organize our lives around creating experiences that keep the family unit connected.
A little free time magically appears, and what do we do? “Let’s all do something together!”
Again, beautiful.
But when family time becomes the only kind of meaningful time we create, we can miss something incredibly precious:
Because your relationship with each of your children is its own relationship. It has its own chemistry. Its own language. Its own jokes, tensions, tenderness, history, and possibilities.
And it deserves its own attention.
Who is your child outside the family?
Every family develops its own little ecosystem. There is the funny one. The responsible one. The sensitive one. The independent one. The one who keeps the peace. The one who pushes everyone’s buttons. The one who talks constantly. The one who barely gets a word in.
We fall into roles without even realizing it. And sometimes those roles become so familiar that we stop noticing the person underneath them.
That’s one of the things I love most about watching parents and children at retreats. Take away the siblings. Take away the spouse or co-parent. Take away the schedule, the chores, the homework, the rushing, the reminders and all the usual family dynamics, and someone different gets to emerge.
I’ve watched parents look at their children almost in amazement.
“Well, hello, daughter.”
As if they’re meeting a part of their child they hadn’t quite had access to before. And often, the child is discovering something too.
Our children get to meet us, too
One-on-one time isn’t only about us getting to know our children better.
They get to know us differently, too.
Outside the usual family dynamics, we aren’t only the person reminding them to put their shoes away, asking about homework, driving them somewhere, telling them to hurry up, or checking whether they’ve eaten. They get glimpses of the human being behind “Mom” or “Dad.”
They hear stories they may never have heard. Because in the busyness and dynamics of family life, we often don’t get many opportunities to openly share what’s inside of us. They learn what makes us laugh. What we were like at their age. What scares us. What we dream about. What we’ve struggled with. What matters to us.
And suddenly the relationship has more room in it. More curiosity, more humanity and more trust.
The experience of having you completely
And something else happens when it’s just the two of you. We become more present.
There are fewer people to keep track of. Fewer conversations are competing for our attention. Fewer dynamics to manage. And so, we notice more. The expression on their face when they tell us something. The story behind the story. What lights them up. What they avoid. The question we might normally rush past.
And our children notice something too: “I have you right now.”
Not half of you while you’re making dinner. Not you listening while also checking on their sibling. Not you coordinating the next thing. But you.
There is something incredibly powerful about a child experiencing, again and again:
I am worth your time. You are interested in me. You want to know me. There is space for all of me here.
That becomes another source of safety and belonging in their lives.
And particularly as our children grow older and begin naturally moving toward friends, independence, and lives of their own, having that strong one-on-one relationship gives them something important to come back to.
A relationship where they know they can talk. A relationship where they know they will be heard.
A relationship that has been built over hundreds of ordinary moments, not only called upon when something goes wrong.
The moments they remember
At the end of our Instagram Live, Geno shared something that stayed with me.
She had asked her daughters about some of their favorite memories, and without hesitation, they brought up the times they had spent one-on-one with her.
Just them. Nobody else.
And I thought, of course.
Because often it isn’t the biggest vacation, the fanciest activity, or the perfectly planned family day that stays with them.
It’s the afternoon when they had you to themselves. The walk where you talked about everything and nothing. The breakfast date. The ridiculous inside joke. The car ride when, somehow, they decided to tell you something important. The weekend when nobody was rushing anywhere.
It made me think of something that happened in our own family this summer.
At my husband’s 50th birthday celebration, both of our daughters stood up to say a few words about their dad. And guess what made it into their most treasured memories?
For one of my daughters, it was the day she and her dad went on a long hike and stopped at McDonald’s afterward. We never go there as a family, but somehow, for the two of them, that became part of what made it special. Their little date. Their memory.
My oldest daughter talked about the times she had listened to her dad tell stories about when he was little.
That’s it.
A hike and McDonald’s and listening to stories about Dad as a little boy.
That simple. And maybe that’s exactly the point.
Our children don’t necessarily need more elaborate experiences with us. Sometimes they just need more opportunities to have us to themselves.
Love may be instinctive. Connection requires intention.
This doesn’t happen by accident.
This is perhaps the biggest thing I’ve learned. We can deeply love our children and still forget to intentionally nurture our individual relationship with them.
Because family life is busy. There will always be another practice, another deadline, another dinner to make, another WhatsApp to answer, another family plan. So one-on-one connection requires intention.
And interestingly, one of the number one commitments I hear at the end of my retreats is some version of:
“We’re going to keep doing this.”
Parents and children leave wanting to protect regular one-on-one time together. Not necessarily retreats. Sometimes it’s breakfast once a month. A walk, a little trip, a coffee or tea date, an evening together—the activity almost doesn’t matter.
What matters is the message: I choose time with you.
What if this Thanksgiving you gave each other that?
Our upcoming Parent & Child Retreat, Coming Home to Each Other, takes place November 26–29 in beautiful El Pescadero, Baja California Sur, Mexico.
And yes, it begins on Thanksgiving. Intentionally.
Because perhaps there is no better way to celebrate gratitude than to slow down enough to truly appreciate the person sitting beside you.
We’ll begin Thanksgiving evening together and spend four days stepping away from schedules, screens, and everyday demands, with guided conversations, movement, play, meaningful shared experiences, and plenty of unstructured time to simply be together.
One parent. One child. Four days.
No siblings competing for attention. No everyday roles to fall back into. No rushing to the next thing. Just an opportunity to become curious about each other again.
The retreat is designed for parents and children ages 10–18, and Anna and I are intentionally keeping the group intimate.
Perhaps you’ll come home knowing things about each other you didn’t know before. Perhaps you’ll have conversations you’ve been meaning to have. Perhaps you’ll laugh a lot. Perhaps your child will get to see a side of you they haven’t seen before. Perhaps you’ll look across at them at some point and think:
Well, hello there.
If something in you is already imagining which child you would bring, pay attention to that.
Come spend Thanksgiving differently this year.
Learn more about the retreat here: Coming Home to Each Other: Parent & Child Retreat
And if you’re curious but aren’t quite sure whether it’s right for you and your child, reach out. I’d be very happy to talk with you about it.
