Being Present with Your Kids

Jonathan Field’s recent post, Is Your High Powered Job Setting Your Kids Up To Fail, got me thinking about my own kids. He points out studies and experiments that show kids whose parents were more “present” in their lives during their formative years did better in school, and stayed out of trouble.

This post expands on my earlier post about the 7 Principles I’m Teaching My Kids.

Troubled Kids

When I hear about troubled kids, I think of any recent number of murders (or massacres) committed by a young males, and the inevitable follow up report that the perpetrators’ parents usually “had no idea”.

They had no idea.

Why is that?

Parents Must Be Responsible Parents

It’s obvious to me that what was missing was open communication between the parents and the child. A parent needs to know what’s going on in their kids’ lives out of the home. When you think about it, a young child spends approximately two-thirds of their lives at home eating, playing, doing homework, etc., and sleeping, and the remaining third at school. So, during their formative years, two-thirds of their lives are spent exposed to anything and everything they see and hear in school, on the TV, in the classroom, on the playground and on the internet under their parents’ care.

So obviously, the most influential person your people kids can (or should) ever see, talk to, and listen is you, the parent.

Open Communication is Key

This communication has to start at a very young age, and continue throughout the teen years — since I guess if you’d made it that far, communications should remain optimum during the child’s adult years.

I want that with my kids.

So what am I doing about it?

I certainly do not have a “high powered job”, but I do run my own business, and can easily (and often do) spend upwards of 70 hours per week on it.

I realize that low-income households may have (a) parent(s) who work all day, just to make ends meet. Even high-income households will have parents work all day as well, leaving their kids under the care of nannies. Both situations often means the parents are unavailable.

Attend their School Activities

For me, luckily, one of the perks I that I DO have is the ability to take a little time off to attend my children’s school activities: Halloween Costume Parades, music concerts, field trips, school plays and the like.

To see their smiles and their waving when they see me in the audience really brings a warm feeling to my heart.

I’m certain that just my presence boosts their self-esteem, validates their importance to me, and at the dinner table that particular night, the child will proudly describe what transpired. I also bring along my little point and shoot camera to take few shots or a short video. And after the dinner, we sit in front of the computer to relive their memories.

The kid is happy for the rest of the evening. And beyond.

This simple activity will form the basis for the child’s future nostalgia.

Discipline, Discussion and Decisions

I’ve also found that dinner time is a great time to go over important lessons — and the kids’ various teachers have mentioned that “what’s practiced at home is what’s practiced at school”, and of course, in life.

• Paying Attention - during dinner, the TV is OFF. I know it’s so tempting to want to be entertained while eating, and for a few years we did that since we were eating with relatives who did the cooking. But recently, we’ve started cooking for ourselves in order to eat earlier, and now that the TV off, the difference is so much more noticeable. We can talk about various topics without the kids eyes wandering off. The kids actually look at their food, and at whomever is talking.
• Discussion - the quiet also allows us to bring up topics that may have been brought up in the car ride home. Oh, a “friend” snitched about a secret you told him? How does that make you feel? Is that person trustworthy? Conversations like that allows us to broach on more abstract topics that we feel are crucial to their emotional growth.
• Decisions - the last thing that I want to mention is we can use the dinner time to make announcements, such as what we’re going to do on the weekend, or how much more attention should the kids pay to their schoolwork, etc.

I know my kids are still young yet (5th and 1st graders), but both their mom and I feel that it is SOOOO important, especially in our oh-so-complicated society, that we make sure we connect with our children at an early age. We want them to feel comfortable and that it’s safe to talk to us.

Hopefully, they’ll continue down a fruitful path, with a nudge or two from us from time to time.

Thank you so much for checking out my blog! If you like what you see, I'd like to invite you to subscribe to my RSS feed and maybe tell your friends about it. I'd really appreciate it!

Other posts you may enjoy:

1. 7 Principles I’m Teaching My Kids
2. The Reason Why We Do the Things We Do
3. My Favorite Childhood Books

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