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2. PARENTING POINT TO PONDER: What Makes Your Top-Five List?
3. ARTICLE: Just a Minute... An Excerpt from Hidden Messages: What Our Words and Actions Are Really Telling Our Children
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5. BOOKS: Reviews, Excerpts and Purchase Info
A handful of topics in the area of parenting are always sure to start a heated discussion. This month, we discuss one of those issues: Spanking. Interestingly, even if all participants in a conversation share the same opinion, you'll still hear an engaging and passionate discussion.
I was brought up by a father who believed in spanking, and I grew up to be a mother who believes that there are much better and more effective ways to raise children. As I look at my own children — ages 15, 13, 10 and 3 — I see young people who are compassionate, caring, independent, curious and happy individuals who I love to be around. I believe that positive, nurturing parenting has helped to make them who they are.
Elizabeth
It's a wise idea to review the priorities in your life, make a list of your top five, and begin investing the bulk of your time and energy in those choices. If you are a parent, your list — of course — should include your children. Keep your list of five handy, and refer to it whenever a decision arises. Ask yourself often, "Does what I am doing, or about to do, fit into my list of priorities?"
When you decide that your family and your children are your priority, and that you want, and need, to spend more time with them, your daily decisions will become easier. You may even begin to ascertain that some goals you had rated as top priority are supremely unimportant. And as a natural and direct effect, these will fall away, leaving you with two undeniable gains: a heightened and refined sense of values, and the freedom to pursue them.
"Daddy, Play With Me"
The clock in Jeff's car glows 6:40 P.M. as he rolls into the driveway after a long and tiring day at work. He opens the door to his home with a weary sigh and drops the mail next to the answering machine, which is blinking in that incessant, anxious way that demands listening. All he wants is a relaxing evening with no bosses, clients, or coworkers to please. He greets his wife warmly. As they chat about their day, she asks if he'd mind fixing dinner so she can finish up a few things. "No problem," he assures her. Before heading to the kitchen, he pauses to savor a moment's peace, silently planning out the next few hours: check the mail, listen to messages, take a hot shower, fix a quick dinner . . .
"Hi, Daddy! Play with me?" Snapped out of his reverie, Jeff puts on a smile and bends to wrap a hug around the giggling little angel with the hopeful eyes. He twirls her around in big circles and plants kisses on her nose. "Hey, my little Lily-flower!" he croons. He buries his nose in her soft hair, loving the little-child feel and scent of her. Laughing with glee, Lily cherishes these sparkling moments in her daddy's arms; craving more, she implores, "Play with me?" "Hey, punkin', I have some things to do; then we'll play later."
"Just a little while, Daddy?" she pleads with a smile. But looking at his face, she suddenly knows he'd never drop everything just for some silly play, but she can't help asking one last time. When the expected answer comes, she wanders off.
Lily counts the minutes on the clock while Jeff loses himself in the mail, the newspaper, and the answering machine, looking forward to the completion of his daily responsibilities so that he can play with his daughter. After some time on the computer reading email, he trudges upstairs, loosening his tie. He can almost feel the steamy warmth of the shower, the comfort of those old sweats, the...wait, what is this?
He turns to find a beaming little girl, who'd sneaked up the stairs behind him, given away by the soft thumping of her tiny feet. She musters all the vocal sweetness that she imagines a good girl to have and asks, "Can we play now, Daddy?" She doesn't want to bother him. She just wants him close to her, laughing his silly laugh just for her.
What Jeff hears is persistence — a trait he will someday appreciate in her as an adult, but one that annoys him today. So, with a ruffle of her hair, he dismisses her with strained patience. "In a little bit, Lily. Why don't you go ask Mommy if she can play with you now?"
Not so easily put off, she is in position at the bottom of the stairs when he descends some time later. Her little face is fairly bursting with the effort of holding back her request. She doesn't want to annoy him, doesn't want to be inconvenient, doesn't want to be bad — and so, says nothing, hoping he'll remember his promise to play "later."
But he doesn't.
"Ready for some dinner?" he asks, walking quickly past her in an effort to stave off a few repeats of her "Want to play?" chorus. He enters the kitchen and begins pulling items from the refrigerator. Just then, the telephone rings, and little ears listen — as they always do — as Jeff answers. "Hello? Hey, Steven. How are ya? Great. Did you catch the game Sunday?..." And so he is lost to her again, this time to adult conversation, phone tucked between ear and shoulder. Maybe if I'm just quiet and smile real big, Lily thinks. So she looks up at him with every fiber of her being poured into her smile, every good thing in her soul spilling from her eyes. Still on the phone, her daddy smiles back vacantly and plops a plate of dinner down for his daughter. Lily's best smile fades as she quietly eats her dinner to the hum of Daddy's voice on the phone. Afterward, of course, Daddy is busy. There's dinner to be cleaned up, garbage to be taken out, bills to pay... And all the while, Jeff's little one — who naturally will not be little forever — patiently and proudly waits beside her latest Lego masterpiece. She just knows he'll notice it soon. But the doorbell rings, and Jeff strides right past her to answer. Perhaps after the visitor leaves, she wonders...
It's Rahul, their neighbor. He needs help getting his lawn tractor started. "Hate to bother you, Jeff, but you think you might have a second to look at it?"
"Of course," Jeff replies, his thoughts registering the day last week when Rahul was there at 6:00 A.M. to jump-start Jeff's car. "That's what good neighbors are for."
After letting his wife know where he's bound, he reaches down to plant kisses on his daughter's soft cheeks. “Be right back, punkin',” he says. And he leaves too quickly to notice the silent tears that have begun to run down those same cheeks so hastily kissed, soft cheeks that are soon buried in pillows. When Jeff returns, she is asleep, dreaming of moving out and becoming a neighbor who could ring the doorbell, call Daddy on the phone, and send emails to him.
The Hidden Message
“You are not as important to me as the mail, the messages, the dinner, the phone call or the neighbor. I love you, but I'm too busy for you — and there's always later, there's always tomorrow.”
Think About It
Children perceive time, and what we do with it, differently from the way adults do. For little ones, every moment is weighty with possibility. Consider, for instance, the evening that we just witnessed — it passed particularly slowly for the little girl, but it blew past the man who is her father.
Seconds become minutes, of course, and minutes become hours. And imperceptibly, hours become decades. One day, Jeff may turn around to play with his little girl, only to find a young woman too busy tending her own life to notice — after all, she has learned by his example. Ask any parent of grown children, and he or she invariably will attest to how fast it all goes. The hard truth is that we have only a relatively small sliver of time in which to give our children the gifts of our experience, patience, wisdom, and heart.
Naturally, obligations intrude on our every day. Of necessity, we allot time for the chores that keep us fed, clothed, clean; these things push themselves into our plans by their very nature. Other items seize our attention with their urgency: a flashing message machine, a ringing phone, a buzzing doorbell. Certain activities, however, don't call to us so loudly. Yet, these can have an impact more profound than all the others combined: activities such as walking in a park, visiting relatives, tossing a baseball…or building a Lego city. These are the experiences that build up a soul.
We need to begin, right now, at this very moment, to see each second as a gift, as an opportunity to savor where we all are now — whether we do this by playing, chatting, or simply being together with our children. In so doing, we may weave a lifeline that continues to hold throughout the years. When that Lego city gets built, so does the foundation to a future. And a minute of time for a child will someday be worth its equivalent in hours to the adult she becomes. The time we spend with our children at this very moment nurturing, teaching and loving them is the substance that helps mold them into the people that they will become.
A condensed excerpt from:
Hidden Messages: What Our Words and Actions Are Really Telling Our Children by Elizabeth Pantley (Contemporary/McGraw-Hill Books, 2001)
Attachment Parenting International
"Peaceful Parenting for a Peaceful World"
http://www.attachmentparenting.org
Please browse my Website (http://www.pantley.com/elizabeth/ for articles, parenting Q & A, links — plus excerpts from, reviews of, and purchase info for my books:
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