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 The Best of Your Time By Kay Kuzma, EdD
Start by making your family your top priority. Children do take time. Expect it. Don’t resent it. And don’t let others make you feel guilty when you can’t keep up with everything you used to do before children. Positive time given willingly to your child is the most critical factor in reaching your goal of molding your child’s character for Christ. You can’t be an inconsistent “whenever I feel like it” parent and achieve it. You can’t put your job, church, housework, yard work, or your own pleasure first, and make it work. You’ve got to make family relationships your number-one priority. You’ve got to find satisfaction in meeting the needs of your children; satisfaction in playing and working with your children; satisfaction in just being with them. At first this time commitment may sound scary to you. Since children take time, you’ll need to give that time willingly, without frustration and resentment. But a child shouldn’t consume your entire existence. Yes, they need the best of your time, but you still need to be you. You can’t put your own pleasure first when it conflicts with meeting your children’s needs, but you still need a life of your own. You have personal needs that can be met without harming your children. If you overlook yourself and your marriage relationship in the process of trying to be a good parent, you’re going to end up empty, frustrated, and depressed. You can’t constantly meet the needs of your children, especially when you have young dependent children, unless your personal needs are met. If they aren’t met in a healthy, mature way, there’s a danger you’ll expect your children to meet your emotional needs, which is often the case in dysfunctional homes. Children cannot grow toward healthy self-reliance and independence from parents when they are made to feel they must meet their parents’ needs. Tuck love into pockets of time. To prove to your children that they are top priority in your life, you’ve got to have a mind-set that says, “If I have a couple of minutes, what fun activity can I do with my kids?” If you wait until you have a free hour or so, it may be months—or years! That’s why I suggest tucking little bits of fun into whatever pockets of time you can find: Throw snowballs, watch a caterpillar, have a tickle contest, tell riddles, make up a funny song, fly a kite, give each other butterfly kisses (using eyelashes), or have a bareback picture-drawing contest and see who can guess what object you are drawing with your finger on each other’s back. The sky’s the limit. It doesn’t take money; it doesn’t take brains; just the mind-set to tuck love into the little pockets of time you have with your children. It’s a great way to say, “You’re number one in my life!” Make child-care time a meaningful event Take advantage of “have-to” time—the time you must spend caring for your children. Enjoy dressing, feeding, bathing, and transporting them. Smile. Talk. Sing. Teach. Make up fun rituals. Laugh! When you put a little extra into your child-care duties, children have an easier time catching the “I love you” message. In reality, time spent with a child is never wasted unless it sounds like this: “Lisa, quit crying. I can’t stand it. If you don’t shut up, I’m going to give you something to cry about!” Venting your frustration on your child is abusive. Don’t let yourself get so frustrated and worked up that you lose control and take it out on your little one. But other than that, time spent together is valuable. Plan time together. It’s never too early for you to establish a routine in which you plan to put everything else aside and spend time together. For example, when you first get home from work, take fifteen minutes and play with your child. Establish a bedtime routine: Bath, story, prayers, rocking with a lullaby, and a goodnight kiss as they’re tucked into bed. When our children were young, they used to love to jump in bed with us early in the morning. We would snuggle up together, and my husband, Jan, would read them a story while I caught a few more winks. It was a great routine until we no longer all fit in one bed! Plan daily family times to which children can look forward: Meal time, Daddy play time, story and song time, devotions. As the children grow and become more involved with family policies, problem solving, and planning, start a weekly family council or “staff” meeting. Studies contrasting the time choices of stay-at-home moms and moms who work outside the home have found that “working” mothers often plan more time with their children than other moms. Why shouldn’t activities with the children be scheduled in your day planners even if you’re home most of the time? Here’s an idea: Ask your husband to give you an hour each Sunday evening to plan a fun week with the children. Pencil in craft ideas, field trips to take, special projects you can do with your children like planting a garden or making birthday or Christmas gifts. Think of each of your children and plan something special to do with each one. Time together as a family is meaningful—but time together with one child, even if it’s just fifteen minutes a day, is a great way to say, “You’re special!” These planned times will become pleasant, reassuring rituals for you and your children. They build the all-important feeling of family security. Bonding with Your Baby Bonding isn’t some magical method that occurs at birth when Dad gets to cut the umbilical cord and Mom breastfeeds on the delivery table. Birth bonding, although important, isn’t an epoxy glue that is going to hold things together for a lifetime. Bonding is a day-by-day process of relationship building, and it needs to occur at each developmental stage. Each day parents and children are either in the process of strengthening their connections or weakening them. Why is bonding important? It is the closeness of your relationship with your growing child that will ensure your continued influence. Dr. William Sears, well-known pediatrician considers the connection that forms between parent and child the most important factor in effective parenting. It’s during the uninterrupted time when you really focus on your child that bonding happens in the relationship. The more focused you are, the more connected. Degrees of focus are determined by the number of different senses stimulated during an encounter. That’s why with each child, it is so important to spend time looking (the sense of sight), talking (the sense of hearing), and touching (the sense of feel). But smell and taste can also be bonding. Let me explain why each sense is so important: Looking. Focused attention happens when parents take the time to have eyeball-to-eyeball connections with their kids. Getting down on your child’s level, focusing on his or her eyes when talking, and interpreting a child’s body language are important bonding skills parents must practice. Hearing. Communication is an important key to good parent/child relationships throughout life. But the time to establish good communication patterns is during the first few years. Talk, listen, talk, listen. As your child grows you’ll want to shift the emphasis to listen, talk, listen, talk. By keeping the lines of communication open during the growing years, you will avoid much conflict and misunderstanding that is typically referred to as the generation gap between parents and teens. Now a word about touching: Our skin is the most extensive and sensitive organ in our bodies. That’s why touch is the most intimate way we communicate love. Yet touch is one of the most misunderstood and under-used treasures of love available to families. It’s a far more potent method of saying, “I love you,” than mere words—or gazing into each other’s eyes. And it’s the clearest, best-understood language of love for young children. Yet, just as a gentle touch can have the most impact for good on a relationship, a harsh or inappropriate touch can be devastating, causing physical or sexual abuse. • A gentle touch bonds. A harsh one destroys. • A gentle touch says, “You’re desirable.” A harsh one says, “You’re no good.” • A gentle touch cushions conflicts and hastens reconciliation. A harsh one leads to alienation. Unfortunately, many moms and dads aren’t comfortable with touch. That’s why it’s so important to get started and practice early. Think of touch as something the doctor has prescribed for you and your child. Use stroking, holding, and rocking throughout the day to help prevent whining and fussiness later in the day. Massage those little arms, fingers, legs, and feet. And don’t forget, babies—and growing children—love back and tummy rubs. Research has shown that babies who are touched frequently while awake—every ten or fifteen minutes—tend to be less fussy. You don’t have to interrupt your child’s play, or even speak while touching. Just merely put a hand on your child for a few seconds and move on. Children feel safe and secure in an environment where touch is natural and spontaneous. What about smell? Why is it that the scent of lilac perfume, musk aftershave, or freshly baked bread suddenly brings up images of our parents when we were young? Pleasant smell bonds. Putrid smell repels. It works the same way with our children. You and your home should smell good. Children can survive on frozen dinners and commercially baked goods, but the aromas of homemade soup bubbling on the stove and cookies baking in the oven add to the bonding experience. And taste? Add food that titillates the taste buds to a pleasant experience of meaningful talk, interested looking, appropriate touching, and pleasant smells, and you have the ingredients for strong, meaningful bonding. That’s why research is showing that families that eat together stay together. And the children are better adjusted and do better in school. When You Have a Hard Time Bonding with Baby Here is a sobering thought: Not all parents fall in love with their babies at first sight—or even in the first few months. Instead, they experience what is called postnatal ambivalence (PNA). Sometimes it is as simple as mothers having low levels of the “bonding” hormone, prolactin. Some parents have a hard time accepting their baby’s looks, especially if they think babies should be cute, cuddly things—or their baby reminds them of an obnoxious relative. Sometimes parents are overcome with fatigue and find it hard to love a needy, crying baby. One parent asked, “How can you love a newborn that is all take and no give? It’s like a backpack that eats, poops, and wakes you up at night.” The good news is that if you don’t push yourself to feel loving toward your baby, but keep doing the things that you know your baby needs, like holding, cuddling, cooing, diapering, feeding, burping, and bathing, love will grow. In other words, go through the motions. Read to your baby, even if it’s a one of your books, and the sound of your voice will strengthen your connection. Jump in the tub together. Give your baby a daily massage. Skin-to-skin contact is bonding. It may sound like work to act loving when you don’t feel like it, but as Kevin Leman, Ph.D., author of the book The New Birth Order Book: Why You Are the Way You Are, says, “Feelings of love will come when you repeatedly act in a loving way toward your child.” Commit yourself to a lifetime of daily bonding experiences, and bonding will come. Loving feelings follow loving actions. _______________________________ Kay Kuzma, EdD, The First 7 Years, Pacific Press, 2005. Reprinted with permission. Answers © 2010 AnswersForMe.org. Click here for content usage information. |
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