If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them and half as much Money.
Anonymous
Many times we want to give our children what we did not have or if we had many things we want to fill them with stuff, but this phrase so short and so pretty reminds us that the most important is the time we spend with our children and much better if the time spent with them is quality time: having fun, talking, listening. Occasionally angry because this too is part of life, as well as Bette Davis puts it:
If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.
It is important to express in the time we share together the unconditional love we feel for our kids. This means that our love for them will not change; we love them when they are happy, when they are sad, when angry, etc… In the book, The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz thanks her mother, Sarita, for teaching him unconditional love.
I don’t remember reading about someone giving thanks for all material things he once received, I do not mean that we should never give gifts to our children. What we must not think is that excessive gifts can somehow fill the love that our children need.
Yesterday we went out together as family to buy a present for each of our kids, the idea was to buy a gift they would really want and that they hadn’t received from their grandparents, uncles or Santa, something they had asked and had not arrived on Christmas Day. The interesting part is that when we got back home just before going to sleep, my husband asked them, What do you like to do the most? The three of them answered ‘spending time with my family.’ Nobody said buying toys or watch TV or use the computer or play Nintendo.
As mother I know they really loved the toy we bought them the night before, because they ask my husband and me playing with it. I am also sure that the time we spend with them is priceless and my kids appreciate it. Finally, Dr. Robert J Solomon tells us the following when he talks about children «They need to be a little hungry» the Dr. is of course referring to material things.
Giving kids too much can interfere with their development because it creates complacency.
Dr. Robert J Solomon
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