Three days ago, the always incisive Faro published on his website a vignette related to the time parents spend with their children or, rather, the time they do not spend with them.
It is nothing more than a bullet with four sentences, but in a moment we are all able to see a father who decides not to be there where his daughter expects him to be to do something he wants to do. This makes me remember that time that we don't dedicate to our children, which is much for different circumstances of life, and above all that we do not dedicate to them when we could perfectly do it.
I have commented on more than one occasion and I will surely do it again because it is a recurring theme in many family relationships: many parents do not know how to spend time with their children and many times they get to avoid being together.
I can get to understand it because myself, that I was a child who played little with my brothers because I didn't find too many common interests with them (they loved cars, but they didn't motivate me so much, for example), I suffered a lot when I was with my First child for not knowing what to do with him. I didn't know what to play, I didn't know how to entertain him and there were times when I almost preferred Miriam to play with him or be with him for not knowing how to relate.
However, I didn't want that to be the tonic of our relationship and I decided to relax and enjoy, let the game arise, spend time with him simply for the pleasure of being together. If games came out, perfect, if not, nothing happened, we did other things.
I decided to solve it but there are other parents who do not get to try it or do not even believe that parents and children can find a common place and so I have been able to see parents who, being able to go at a specific time of work, stay longer to do "Something inescapable" in case the breva falls and then when she gets home the girl is almost asleep or directly asleep. Or parents, as you have heard more than once, who leave their children with their grandparents for a few days to rest, to make a trip together, to disconnect. And I do not understand, because my children saturate me a lot sometimes, those in which you would like the earth to swallow you and then say resigned that "it is the same, apologizing that it is gerund", but I do not need to rest from them a few days because Don't rest from the people you love, I think.
All this I comment because the risk is high. I spent a lot of time with Jon, the oldest, when I was little. Now that he is six years old and that at home we also have Aran, three years old and Guim, eight months old, the time I spent with Jon, alone he and I, is minimal. We talk, we cross, he tells me, I tell him, etc., but it is a long time that we do not spend together because I have (we have) to share among the three brothers.
That is a lot of time and that's why a few days ago I decided to tell him that “I know that now we don't spend so much time together and that we don't play as much as before, but don't worry that you and I can play again soon, to read more stories, to tell us more things… ”
It’s not that I’m going to stop working or I’m going to take a reduction in working hours, it’s that the little ones will soon grow up, they will be more autonomous, it will not be necessary to provide them with so many basic care and there will be more time to share among all. He, who is a magical child (it seems to me), just says “ok, dad”, content with the little I give him, but glad to know that soon there will be more, that The best is yet to come.
I say this because, as I said, the risk is high, but I wanted to let you know that I don't want to, I can't. And I say that the risk is high because if at any time your son or daughter, your sons or daughters smell that it is not that you cannot, but that you do not want, the blow to their self-esteem can be serious.
Look at the girl in the vignette again and think about those times, when you were her age, when you would have liked your father to be with you and instead of a "yes" you received an excuse. Remember how did you feel and try to think about how this girl and all the girls and teenagers who have barely spent time with their parents can feel. Think about how they will be.
You will surely reach the same conclusion as me: children and adolescents lacking references, with a self-esteem probably touched on the search for a group of friends who understand and welcome them (which may not be a bad thing, but which can be dangerous, depending on the group). Children and teenagers who they don't know how to communicate with their parents because their parents do not know how to communicate with their children and, consequently, parents who continue trying to educate so that their children do not deviate but with little result, for not having a relationship of minimum trust.
As I say, it is very dangerous for your children to feel that “you don't have time for me”, but for other things, so if you feel that there is a lack of communication, that you spend a few moments together, that you don't know how to fill the time you spend with them or if your son seems to bother you directly, because he continually wants to be with you but you prefer to be doing something else, think about your responsibility as a parent and educator, think about the future and think that your son is there, with his backpack open, willing to learn from you and willing to trust you, glad you fill his backpack and glad to put his own stuff in yours.
The thing can end badly if you walk with your backpack open and, instead of spending time to fill your son's, you continue to dedicate yourself, now that you are a father, to continue filling yours and not with your son's things, but with things that can come from others. Wrong because, as I said, someone will arrive in the future to fill his empty backpack and maybe then you don't like what's inside. By then it may be late, you will want to fill your backpack suddenly and there will be no room for your stuff.
