Spending Time With Your Child
|
Why Is Spending Time with Your Child So Important?
For children to get any sense that they are loved and wanted, you have to be prepared to spend some time with them. I know you are all thinking, so tell me something I don't know. My point in all of this is how important this really is. The term "spending time with your child" gets tossed out there fairly casually. We hear it so often that after awhile we may not take it as seriously as we should. I found myself, with all of the time I have to spend with my diabetic daughter and daily diabetes care, considering that as part of my quota of time spent with my child. In a sense it is, but it's not the kind of time that makes the relationship with your child so special. This is a difficult article for me to write because I can see some areas I need to improve in. I hope this isn't too difficult to read. There's no getting away from this simple truth. If you do not give them very much of your time, talking, laughing, playing, and sharing things or just generally being around listening to and enjoying them, how can they possibly get any other message than that they are not worthy of your love, time, and attention? How can they then progress to love themselves if they perceive that you always put yourself and others first, before them, and that they are apparently incidental to your life, even that they are a nuisance? Please note that I said "they perceive". What a child perceives is not always accurate. But to a child perception is reality. If they think this is how you feel, then to them, this is how you feel. This is why I think the time you spend with your child is so important. I know how much you love your child. You know how much you love you child. What's so critical is does your child know how much you love your child? Our children need us to be interested in them and to demonstrate our love for them by spending time with them right through adolescence.
How Do We Know that Children Need So Much Time?
- The more you give, the more they want.
- If they don't get it, they behave badly to try to get it.
Our children will need us, love us and want us more than we can imagine. We give them their sense of belonging, and security. Children can crave this so much that when it's not given naturally and spontaneously, they will behave in what ever ways they think they have to in order to get it.
Time to Do What?
Talk
Talk about your day, their day, what you are going to do, what you are seeing on the street, what they are watching on television, what they like to do, your childhood, their relatives, their toys.
Play
Sit with them while they play, and talk to them about what they are doing.
Listen
Look at their faces when they are telling you something. If it seems important to them, stop what you are doing and sit down with them to hear it.
Quiet Time
Sit with them while they watch TV (this can be painful but important) or while they are getting ready for bed.
Share
Invite them to do something or go somewhere with you, to show you enjoy their company.
These examples give us a variety of ways to spend time with our children. We can join them in what they are doing, invite them to join in what we are doing, or do something alongside them, in parallel, talking together or just being quiet together.
Special Time for Each One.
Each child in the family needs to have special time with each parent. It doesn't have to be a vast amount of time, or have to happen every day. But each of our children is different, and will want to have a chance to be alone with each of us. When you get right down to it sibling rivalry is competition for the parents' attention. Individual "special" time given to each child can lead to a lot less fighting among them.
Quality Time
Quality time is the term that was developed to meet the working parent's main problem, not being able to spend as much time as you would like at home. The idea of quality time is that it's not how much time we spend with our children that matters, but what we do with the time we have with our children. Spending quality time means giving them our wholehearted attention, and ensuring it is constructive, productive time spent actively doing things with them. It is an important concept but we need to remember it has some limitations. By considering these limitations we can make better use of quality time. The problem with this is that it doesn't take into consideration moods and feelings. Instead of doing something active, playing or going somewhere, our child may just feel like being quiet with us, curling up and just being together. This can be just as important to our relationship with our children as active communication. Another problem is that quality time is often scheduled. If we can't be there at that unpredictable moment when our child decides to tell us about something the schedule falls short. By the time we get home the need may have passed. To show that we understand and to help, especially younger children, remember that there was something they wanted to tell us, we need to have a plan in place for these situations. For older children it may be as easy as a special place for a note. For younger children we can make it into a game. They might have a special stuffed animal that they leave in a certain place to let us know there was something they wanted to share. You can invent your own system. Some quality time could be spent devising the system.
"Being there" or spending time with our children doesn't mean twenty-four-hour availability. It just means offering them some flexibility on access to meet special circumstances and listening to them when they ask for it. The results of time spent with our children is the special love and happiness in the relationship we dreamed about before we ever had them. Our children are precious. The amount of time that they are children is short. If we make good use of this short time we have, we do our jobs as parents to raise happy healthy kids.
Russell Turner is the father of a 10 year old Type 1 Juvenile Diabetic daughter. When she was first diagnosed he quickly found there was all kinds of information on the internet about the medical aspects of this disease. What he couldn't find was information about how to prepare his family to live with this disease. He started a website http://www.mychildhasdiabetes.com and designed it so parents of newly diagnosed children would have a one-stop resource to learn to prepare for life with diabetes.
|
|
|
Friendships - Helping Children Develop Friendship Skills
Reasearch into children's friendships shows that those children who are able to form friendships when they start school are happier at school and also learn better.More significantly, a positive beginning to friendships...(related: Parenting)
Pregnancy And Excercising - 6 Reasons To Excercise During Pregnancy
Everyone knows that exercise is good for your health. Exercising during pregnancy can have additional benefits. Generally, exercise should be light, especially during the first few weeks of pregnancy while your body adjusts to the changes. Heavy exercise can divert blood flow from crucial areas and most women that exercise regularly should tone down their workouts during pregnancy.Walking, swimming, and yoga are two popular exercise activities suitable for pregnant women. Other forms of exercise like weight lifting are okay too as long as it is not too strenuous. Most experts recommend exercisi...(related: Parenting)
Intro To Medications For Add Adhd
The most common medications used in the treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder are stimulant medications. Anti-depressant medications, and even anti-convulsant medications, are sometimes used as well, though this is less common.
The stimulant medications used to treat ADHD include Ritalin (Methylphenidate), Dexedrine (Dextroamphetamine), ADDerall, and Cylert (Sodium Pemoline). Ritalin is the most commonly used stimulant. About 90% of all patients who decide to use stimulants for their ADHD will at some point use Ritalin. It is the most predictable of the stimulants.
ADDerall is the new ...(related: Parenting)
Public-school True Believers With A Mission
One reason public schools get away with educational failure, year after year, is because they are run by school officials who passionately believe in what they are doing. As the great English writer C. S. Lewis wrote, "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."Public-school true believers often fall into this category - for over a hundred years, educ...(related: Parenting)
Potty Training Battle Of The Wills
Some children practically potty train themselves, while others struggle and resist against the potty. Potty training should never turn into the battle of the wills. If it does, both you and your child will loose. When dealing with strong-willed child, it's best to turn potty training into a game. Use the following suggestions to make potty training fun and exciting for you and your child:Musical Potty Chairs - Musical potty chairs, like the Tinkle Toonz, use positive reinforcement by playing a tune to reward your child for a job well done.Potty Training Dolls - Dr. Phil recommends that parents purchase an anatomically...(related: Parenting)
Is My Child Lazy?
Is there a difference between lazy and unmotivated? Why do some children move as if in slow motion? Is this normal or are they just trying to irritate you? You may be surprised to learn that a great many factors come into play when a child appears to be lazy; stage of growth, hormones, hunger, motivation, lack of clear directions and maybe even sleep deprivation.I have never taught my workshop of "Kids, Chores & More" when there hasn't been at least two parents of 11 year old boys lamen...(related: Parenting)
Pregnancy And Excercising - 6 Reasons To Excercise During Pregnancy
Everyone knows that exercise is good for your health. Exercising during pregnancy can have additional benefits. Generally, exercise should be light, especially during the first few weeks of pregnancy while your body adjusts to the changes. Heavy exercise can divert blood flow from crucial areas and most women that exercise regularly should tone down their workouts during pregnancy.Walking, swimming, and yoga are two popular exercise activities suitable for pregnant women. Other forms of exercise like weight lifting are okay too as long as it is not too strenuous. Most experts recommend exercisi...(related: Parenting)
The Best And Worst Of Motherhood
Until the moment I became a mother, I couldn't quite understand or comprehend the depth when people say "Mothers are the strongest, most noble and loving people in this whole wide world" It's just a whole bunch of cliché stuff that I could live without, thank you very much!The pain. The joy. The sacrifices. The love. The fear. The confusion. The anxiety, panic, loss of time, loss of privacy. The internal battle between a person's own inner personality conflicting with those of being a mother. The need to be alone and oneself roughly pushed aside because a child needs caring,...(related: Parenting)
Raising Strong Daughters
When my daughter was born, I must admit there wasa distinctly different feeling to it. Part of me was thrilled, but part of me was unsure of how to deal with a gender I still couldn't quite understand.When my son was born, there was a clear sense thatthis was territory that I knew: there will bewrestling, playing ball together, playing withcars and, he has a penis! There was a sense ofsecurity from all of this and a deep sense ofknowing.Raising a daughter creates different issues formany fathers; it is even more challengingconsidering the cultural landscape that existstoday.To better understand these is...(related: Parenting)
site-map - Copyright © 2006 | Contact Webmaster | All Rights Reserved. | Parenting