PARENTS GET LESS THAN 30 MINUTES A DAY WITH THEIR CHILDREN

• More than half of parents spend less than half an hour a day one-on-one with their children

• 77% believe they don’t get enough quality time with their kids

• Working during the day (48%) and working late (39%) are the biggest distractions for parents

• One in five parents believe bathtime is the best time of day for bonding

• Leading bathing and washing brand Baylis & Harding is hailing bathtime as the perfect bonding opportunity for families

Parents get just 30 minutes or less of quality time with their kids a day, according to new national research

The biggest barriers to spending quality time with their children  are working during the day (48%) and working late (39%), according to the national research from Baylis & Harding, the UK’s leading  washing and bathing brand.

Other distractions include phone calls and text messages (32%) and for kids, the biggest barriers to bonding time are social media (31%) and TV (30%).

The survey of UK parents found that bathtime offers the most opportunities for bonding and quality time for more than a quarter of parents (25%) with the school run (37%) and meal times (19%) also proving popular.

On average children’s bathtime lasts 23.5 minutes, with 93% of parents saying they look forward to bathtime with their children, making it one of the most enjoyable parts of their day.

For a whopping 95% of us bathtime offers the perfect opportunity to ask kids about their day, with 97% of parents using bathtime as a way to introduce creative play to their children’s daily routines.

For many, bathtime is also a great way to kick start the bed time routine, with almost half of parents (45%) agreeing it helps set up their kids for a good night’s sleep.

Baylis & Harding is now encouraging more parents to use bathtime to create those all important bonding moments, with the launch of its #bathtimebonding campaign and its Goodness Kids collection.

To support the campaign Baylis & Harding has partnered with child behaviouralist Natalie Costa, who has shared her top tips for making the most of your children’s bathtime routine.

Natalie said: “Busy lives mean we often don’t get to spend as much time with our children as we would like, which is why it is so important to really make the most of those moments that we do have.

“Bathtime is a great way to bond with your child, its one of the few times in our days when we have zero distractons, no phones, TV or work and we can focus solely on our child or children.

“There’s lots of things we can do to make bathtime fun for kids and ourselves, using sensory experiences and creative play to start conversations and create those special moments of bonding.”

Natalie’s top tips for bath time bonding:

1. Step into their world

Use bathtime as an opportunity to role play and if possible let your child take the lead. Encourage them to imagine the bath is a swimming pool, or a pool filled with magic potion and their super heroes having their daily dose of super powers as their having a bath. Role play really helps develop your child’s language and imagination skills and it also allows you to connect with them on their level and in their world. Play is the language of children and it’s how they make sense of the world around them.

2. Create a sensory experience

Make bathtime a sensory experience by using bubbles, bath bombs and lots of fun scents, to help stimulate the senses of sight, touch and smell. Blowing bubbles also helps children develop hand-eye co-ordination. Why not use some household containers and get your child to experiment through draining, pouring or straining water from smaller containers into larger bottles or through sieves.

3. Encourage conversations

Use this time as an opportunity to learn something new about your child, we know already that bathtime is a great place to ask questions about their day, but why not add a playful element to this using coloured shapes? You can match the colours to a conversaion starter for example if they pick up a purple shape, ask ‘who made you smile today’ or green shapes ‘what did you not like about your day?’

Children’s skin deserves the very best and Goodness Kids from Baylis & Harding offers the kindest skin-loving care.

Pedeatrician and midwife approved, the range has been designed to make the bathtime routine as easy as possible, each product is scented with a fun fragrance and lovingly crafted with natural ingredients, gentle enough to be used on even the most sensitive of skins.

Katie Blythe, Head of Marketing at Baylis & Harding, said: “We want families to really cherish their bathtime routines and make the most of the bonding time it offers. Our Goodness Kids range has been crafted to make the bathtime routine as easy as possible for parents and their little ones, thanks to our 98% naturally derived formulations and allergen free fun fragrances.”

The Goodness Kids collection from Baylis & Harding is now available to shop online and instore and at selected retailers including Sainsbury’s and Ocado.