January 07, 2013
Staying Connected With Our Children
It seems like there are a lot of things plaguing our children today. The other day I signed on to Facebook to read a blog post about a woman who had lost her 3 year old daughter because her dresser wasn’t secured to the wall. I turn on The Biggest Loser, a favorite show of my sister’s and mine, to see that this is the first season where they’re having children as part of the experience, working hard to tackle childhood obesity. Childhood obesity is such a threat that statistically, the poor health of our nation’s children leaves them in a position where they may not outlive their parents. And then, of course, there’s Newtown, and the unbelievable wealth of information we’re learning after the deaths of 27 in one of our nation’s most haunting mass shootings. The New York Times just ran an article about how guns in the home are linked to higher rates of child and teen suicide. Children and teens experiencing a particularly trying moment may be tempted by guns in the house to make rash decisions they wouldn’t in a gun-free household.
This isn’t an editorial about all the ways in which our children are in danger – we’re parents, that’s all we think about. This is a call, though, to think more about how we can keep lines of communication open with our children. How can we stay connected to them, even when there are so many forces at work – technology, distractions – making that more difficult than ever?
1. Make your home a safe space. Your children have access to everything in your home, whether you think they do or not. They live there, so if it exists in the house, it’s possible for them to get it. There’s no better way to nurture and support your child’s positive growth than by keeping your home a safe space. This means free of everything from guns to unnecessary judgment.
2. Device free hour. We’re serious, people. There is nothing worse for communication than a whole family of people who can’t put down phones and iPads and laptops and Kindles and everything else for at least 60 minutes of face-to-face, genuine communication per day. We need to make sure we’re speaking to our children, not making orders over the top of a tablet.
3. Spend one-on-one time with your children, individually, at least once a week. It seems like we are a world filled with endless diagnoses about why all of our youngsters are prone to this disorder and that concentration flaw and this intolerance and that mood issue. While many of these are overblown, what is important is that all of our children are different. They’re living different lives than their siblings and us and they need to be respected and supported for the virtues, strengths and gifts that they bring into this world. Responding to your children as their individual selves is just as vital as creating a total family identity.
What do you do to keep communication alive in your home?
