Yesterday, we described an article about parenting skills prioritized by researchers. It listed, in order of importance, the ten “parenting competencies” that are most important to the development of healthy, happy children and strong parent-child relationships. This week, I’ll be discussing each of them in more detail and asking for your opinions as well.
It’s no surprise that love and affection top the list here. Surely everyone knows that showing that we care is important right? Well….maybe not so much. Or, even if we do understand that, sometimes we fall short in that department.
While most, if not all, of the parents I know are loving, kind people, we all make mistakes when it comes to showing our kids that we care. Sometimes we take our frustrations out on them. Sometimes we simply aren’t as emotionally expressive or as attentive to our child’s needs for affection as perhaps we should be. The biggest stumbling block that I’ve encountered in this area is…technology.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot that is wonderful about the myriad technological advances that have occurred since I was a kid. Some of these definitely facilitate expressing our love and affection to our kids. For example, if a parent is away on a business trip, using an online chat forum such as Skype can help him or her stay connected with the kids while out of town in a much better way than a phone call could. That’s pretty awesome. When our kids are older, we can text them or send a message on Facebook to let them know we’re thinking of them, just for the heck of it. That’s cool too.
But in terms of our regular routines, for a great many of us, technology has taken over. Yes, I include myself in that number. My iPhone goes everywhere with me and is never off. I check my e-mail, Facebook, bank account, and even this blog remotely thanks to my iPhone, laptop and other gadgets. In short: many (most?) of us are always connected to something, somewhere.
Are we as connected with our kids?
Perhaps we think that our kids know we love them because we say it every day, or because we hug and kiss them and tuck them in at night. But, as those of us in adult romantic relationships know, it takes more than saying the words or engaging in habitual gestures to maintain a strong connection with the person you love. You have to “walk the walk.” It’s no different with our kids.
This is one issue I discussed in the post, “The Wrong Signals.” If we’re supposed to be watching a movie with our children, or making monsters out of Play-Doh with them, or swimming in the lake, what kind of message does it send when we regularly interrupt the movie/playtime to respond to text messages, or to check e-mail? If we spend more time staring at our phone screens than we do interacting with our kids, chances are, we’re not sending good messages to them.
Chances are, we’re saying, this isn’t as important as whatever else I’m doing. You’re not as important.
I’m sure a lot of us don’t really feel that way, but if we are routinely distracted from the time we’re supposed to be spending with our sons and daughters, we might inadvertently make them feel that way.
Some of this isn’t our collective fault as parents; indeed, some of it is beyond our control. Our society places a premium on productivity, as my lawyer friends know very well (too great a premium, if you ask me). Far too many of us are supposed to be accountable and available all the time, even during family dinners, weekends, and vacations. We’re supposed to achieve and produce and crank things out like copy machines so we can send a bill to someone, somewhere.
But we aren’t machines. And our kids certainly don’t understand the demands on us from all sides.
To be sure, we can’t always put things off until they’re in bed for the night. But hopefully, we can explain this in a way that makes sense, and make it up to them when we can focus all of our energy on them.
What we can easily do, though, is save the social networking and texting and other grown-up down time activities for later. We deserve our adult time, but not at the expense of theirs. This really hit home for me one weekend morning when I was on my couch writing a blog post. Anna crawled up next to me and closed my laptop. She said, “Put that down and hold me.” We had been watching a movie together, but she could tell my mind was elsewhere. So I complied. And I learned a lesson that day.
So, we should turn off or ignore our phones when it’s time to play. We need to set aside that quality time with them every day, even if it means scheduling it the way we set aside time for exercise or a haircut.
We should look our kids in the eyes and engage with them while we eat and play. If we’re just watching a movie, we should snuggle with them and talk to them about what’s happening (or sing along with the songs and mimic the dialogue, as we often do). Then, we’re transforming a passive activity into an active one, and they’ll know we’re paying attention, that nothing else is more important at that moment.
Our kids need that.
After all, someday they’ll be embarrassed by us and will wriggle out of our embrace so they can go play with friends. They won’t crave our hugs as much. So let’s take advantage of their desire for love and affection while we can, while they still adore us and want our undivided attention. Not only will this improve our relationships with them, and cultivate loving, affectionate behavior in them, but it will make us happier, less stressed people too. Guaranteed.
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