As a parent you want to see your children succeed in obeying your instructions. You also want to see your spouse succeed in respecting your relationship. Their opportunity, for that success, can be greatly improved by you proactively creating an environment for them to succeed in meeting those expectations.
One simple tool that creates an opportunity for success is the “Five Minute Warning”. Over the years we’ve relabeled this tool to elevate and reflect the virtues within the opportunity by restating it as the Five Minute Opportunity. This tool has worked wonders in our family and alleviated many potentially frustrating and exasperating situations.
In a nutshell, The Five Minute Opportunity establishes a timeframe for obeying and honoring relationships by offering a window of compliance with courtesy and respect. Generally speaking, if you ask your children or spouse to do something, they should respond immediately out of respect and honor of your relationship. However, the Five Minute Opportunity provides a buffer in certain circumstances or situations. For example, if you are getting ready to go out to dinner and say, “Five Minute Opportunity”, that tells the children that they have 5 minutes to wrap up a game, clean up, go to the bathroom, and get buckled in the car. It also tells your spouse that they have five minutes to wrap up an email, phone call, or computer time and get buckled in the car.
The Five Minute Opportunity is a respectful courtesy that you are offering your family to help them to succeed in responding to your request or instruction. These are some of the most common situations where giving a Five Minute Opportunity is useful:
Mealtime – When Mom or Dad is putting in the effort to make a meal, giving everyone the heads up that dinner will be served shortly, allows everyone to be present on time when the meal is hot and ready.
Bedtime – This helps everyone to prepare to wind down for the evening; not just wrapping up an activity, but also mentally preparing for the nighttime routine (especially for the young ones)!
Leaving the house for school, daycare, or work – Not everyone is a morning person, so you can head off the “morning chaos” by creating an environment to prepare and succeed.
Leaving the home of relatives or friends, a picnic or amusement park – Similar to the Bedtime situation, this helps, particularly the children, to mentally prepare to leave and wrap up while they are still having “the best time ever”.
We have also used it countless times in various other circumstances like leaving for a ballgame, going out on date night, getting ready for CouchTime, etc… Again, the idea is to create a window of opportunity for compliance to a request or instruction.
Based upon our own experience, here are some of the biggest pitfalls we’ve encountered that led to the Five Minute Opportunity not working properly or effectively:
Not clearly identifying the expectations – Once you say, “Five Minute Opportunity,” what is expected? What does it look like for children and spouse?
Five minutes is not five minutes – Five minutes needs to be five minutes give or take a few seconds… not minutes. Giving the five minute opportunity when dinner is on the table in 2 minutes defeats the purpose. Likewise, when you are getting ready to leave the house but leave ten minutes later, that just exasperates everyone. Five minutes needs to be five minutes and helps hold us to the standard we’ve set. For younger children, you may need to set a timer so they can learn to gauge the timeframe. Additionally, feel free to offer a Ten Minute Opportunity if that is more reasonable.
Last one minute preparation – The five minute opportunity creates an environment to succeed by allowing the space and time to be ready to fulfill the request. Spending four minutes cramming in an extra email, completing another level in a video game, continuing a call or text conversation, etc… and then spending one minute to actually prepare to comply defeats the purpose. Once the “Five Minute Opportunity” is offered, honor that person by respectfully responding to that opportunity appropriately. Responding sooner than the five minutes is just another way of saying “thank you for the opportunity!”
The Five Minute Opportunity is a simple tool that can head off a lot of potential headaches and frustrations while setting a standard that’s easy to follow and appealing to comply with. Why not give your family the opportunity to succeed?
Blessings to your family,
Shelly and Rich
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