Saturday, January 08, 2000
Now is good time to take time with kids
BY KRISTA RAMSEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
If there is a time when family life settles down — and some of us doubt such a time exists — it is now, in the heart of winter.
The hustle of the holidays is past. Spring social obligations and summer camps are just scratchings on our calendar. The busiest sports seasons are not yet upon us.
This beam of open light on our calendar is both invigorating and intimidating. What if those things we have promised our children for months could actually come to pass? What if we really could do more things as a family?
One day it dawns on us. For all the grand plans we have for their futures, this is the only time we will ever really have with our children. Now. This day. This golden hour.
These ordinary times with us, these off-hours and off-seasons, are the true currency of their childhoods. And we scatter them on the ground like unwanted pennies.
Reach for the real
Yes, they will remember the well-planned and highly financed Family Vacation to Hilton Head or Europe, but perhaps only in the context of hurried sightseeing and unbridled consumption. We want them to learn something from these trips, and they do: To put 50 weeks of their lives on hold so they can live gloriously for two, and then wonder why those two never live up to their billing.
And then to go sadly back to a family routine of clipped conversations and life on the road, running from one “enrichment” activity to the next, growing emotionally poorer all the time.
And, although we'd rather not admit it, what parent among us has not secretly been relieved to send the kids back to school after the holidays? Not because we don't love them, not even to get them out from underfoot, but because we can guarantee someone will teach them something there, that an adult will be around to listen. And it won't have to be us.
It's no wonder we obsess over choosing the right school for them — school is the multivitamin we count on to make up for the poor educational and emotional nutrition we ourselves serve up day after day.
And what they're hungering for — real intellectual engagement, simple fun, an authentic family life, a chance to create with us — are the things we hunger for, too.
Advice from experts
So, in this season of resolution-making, let us get serious about nurturing our children. Here is some wise advice on the things children truly need:
Eileen Cooper Reed, advocate and director of the Children's Defense Fund, Greater Cincinnati Project: It's an easy thing in some ways, hard in others. Parents need to spend some time talking to their children. That will do it. A child who is never heard will engage in behavior that will be heard, usually in displeasing ways. A child who is heard can handle a parent's no's as well as yeses.
Leslie Bush, Finneytown High School English teacher: What is really important is that kids know their parents value and love them no matter what, that their parents see them as the wonderful progressions of God that they are. We take for granted that our children know how we think about them. Often they don't.
Kathy Wade, entertainer and co-founder and executive director of Learning Through Art: Love them and lead them. That's it. They don't have to have everything, just the basics — food in their bellies, a warm arm to put around them, a tap on the butt to say no way to that. Truly loving them means taking the time to teach them.
Meryl Goldman, director of lifelong learning at Rockdale Temple: To make our children's lives richer, we have to teach them to pause and reflect. A prayer ties a knot in time. It forces us to stop and reflect like pearls on a necklace. What a gift to our children to teach them to think about the moments of their lives.
Beth Bronsil, director of Montessori teacher training at Xavier University: We don't play with our children enough. It's one of the things we're losing with computer games, TV and videos. Board games teach children to work together, learn how to win and lose and just to have fun as a family.
Email krista_ramsey@hotmail.com
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