How To Spend Quality Time With Your Children
How To Make Time For Your Kids
Become A Better Father Even If You Are Busy
And today’s topic is about BOND. And as you can see from the headline, it needs attention, man.
How to make your kids love you more than they love their mother.
So why did I come up with this topic today? I was fortunate enough to spend some time and speak with a couple of fathers, two of them are working for me, and we’re talking about fatherhood issues.
One of the PTs at work, George, if you’re reading this, I’m talking about you mate. He just recently had a baby, and before he had a baby, I would say “There is no way to explain what it’s like to have a child”. And honestly before I had my first child, I couldn’t understand the love and the bond between a father and a child. Then when I did, I found the love that I just created, having a child is absolutely amazing. We all know as fathers; one of the biggest challenges we have is obviously be their provider and protector. Right now, we also have a challenge of being able to spend as much time with our kids.
That time I was a pharmaceutical representative, I had to travel all around the country to visit doctors. So it wasn’t so much about the quantity of time anymore because I had to make sure that every moment I spent with my kids was quality. And I thought, How can I get the best out of it?
I was a young father back then; I’m working and so forth, trying to hustle, protecting and providing for my family. When my kids were born, one of the things I would do every time I’d come home is I would have a shower, get into bed or keep my shirt off and allow the baby sleep on my chest, skin to skin. And this actually created a powerful bond between the boys and me.
I was fortunate enough to be given a gift by my sister with my first child. And that gift was the book “10 Best Things About My Dad” by Christine Loomis. I cherish this book, and I never want to lose it.
Every night I would read this book to my boys, and they loved it. It was a really good book because a lot of the things written in there are the things we usually do in everyday life and teaches the kids to appreciate it. And at the end, it has a photo of the child hugging their father, and I would get a hug every night before they go to bed. And It even created a stronger bond between my kids and me. I would read this book over and over to my kids until their age one or two, but until now that they are older, the boys still loves it. It’s been around our family for 16 years.
My point here is, for you to have a strong bond with your children, you need to spend time with them, and it’s not quantity. Like in my case, I’m very busy, and I would love to spend more time with my children. So when I do spend time with them, I make sure it’s quality. Spend positive time, having a laugh, talking about real-life issues, and what they’re going through every single day.
The conversation with them will change as they get older, and if you start the conversation from when they’re young, you’d be able to have a better conversation when they’re older. I’m fortunate enough now that my 16-year-old son is like my best friend. Sometimes I wonder if he views his mom or me as his best friend, but it doesn’t matter. He has a very strong bond with both of us.
Now, the other challenge that most father’s face is we are usually the disciplinary person in the family. As parents, we sometimes play good cop, bad cop with our children. It’s often the father who’s the bad cop. You’ve got to sometimes to lay down the law. You’ve occasionally got to put down your foot and be placed in a hard position because we’re the authoritarian person in the household. You’ve got to discipline your children.
I’ll give an example, One of my kids, which I won’t mention the name, lied to me twice in three days. I was really angry, and I took all the devices off him. They had to learn the consequences because one thing I do not accept in my household is lying. So for three months, he lost all his devices his phone, tablet, PlayStation, TV for three whole months because of his wrong action.
At the time, I’m sure he hated me. What made us get through it was a constant conversation, explaining to him how serious being deceitful is and we don’t want to tolerate that in our family. And after three months when I gave him his phone back, I noticed he became a different person. He matured quite a lot in those three months, and we had a better conversation. I realize this happens, when your children are not on their phone as much, connected to their devices, the internet, to PlayStation, YouTube, et cetera, the whole time.
Don’t be just the disciplinary person, have a conversation afterwards so that your children can understand why they are in trouble. I see this a lot in the community. I see parents yelling on their kids, and I understand, we can sometimes lose our control on our kids. Until now, with my 16, 14 and 8 years old, I definitely lose my control sometimes, especially when I had a bad day. But I’m learning to overcome that, and I learned that the conversation I have with them after I laid down the law or when I give the consequence is actually what makes a difference.
Because many times when we’re angry, we’re not thinking, we lay down the law, and children did not know what they’ve done wrong. But if you had that conversation with them afterwards, then when you’re calm, and you say, look, you’ve done X, Y, and Z, and this is why this has happened. And explain to them, let them understand that this is the reason for the consequence. Especially when they get to teenage years. I see so many fathers and so many parents that lose that connection with their children when they hit the teenage years. And if you don’t have the foundation while they are growing up as I said, you will not be able to connect with your children in their teenage years.
So, fathers, I know that we are providers and protectors and we can get quite busy. I am not saying that mothers don’t, but usually children spend more time with their mother than they do with their father. And it’s important for us to make sure the time we do spend with our children for it to be quality time, not just quantity. So, don’t just watch TV with them, have a talk with them.
One of the rules we have in our house is we’re going to deal at a problem one at a time. We all sit at dinner, no devices on the table, and we will all have a conversation. Laughing, joking around, clowning around, whatever it is. Whatever it is that makes my kids comfortable to do that. It makes me feel happy.
So that’s it for today’s Life Mastery Hack. Have a great day and remember to back yourself.
