Slow down and give your kids your undivided attention

Published 9:00 pm Monday, October 6, 2003

Parents who think at all about their children and teenagers think seriously about their community’s influence on them. And their community is now the world.

Parents think about the pace and the violence sweeping through their children’s lives.

They think about their children being seen as consumers with money to spend, even as "alpha consumers," a phrase invented by a marketing expert.

They think about the television they have invited into every room of their home and about them wandering through the Internet, an unregulated wilderness.

They think about teenagers being able to use instant messaging and cell phones to organize an immediate party in a home without adults. They think about the fact that some adults encourage them to do so.

Parents think about the way young people, and especially girls, have been sexualized by the time they’re in their early teen years, sometimes earlier.

And these are just the extracurricular activities. They don’t count the adult-organized activities such as school, with its demands for performance and testing and athletics.

Neither do these attractions and distractions count the illegal ones, such as drugs and street racing or the high intensity magnets of raves and concerts.

Most parents know, perhaps without even thinking about it, that they can’t actually keep up with their teenagers. When they do think about it, most parents worry about not knowing or understanding what their youngsters are doing, where they are or who they are with.

But the most powerful parenting behavior in this overstimulating global community may not mean going faster. Instead, keeping up may call for slowing down at certain times and in specific ways. The most powerful tool may call for adults to become what author Sharon Daloz Parks calls contemplative parents

Contemplative parents make and take chances to be "fully present" with their children.

Contemplation is a more deliberate and active than it sounds.

Parks wrote "Big Questions, Worthy Dreams: Mentoring Young Adults in Their Search for Meaning, Purpose and Faith," among several other books. She has been on staff and taught at the Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Business School and the Kennedy School of Government. She now lives in the Pacific Northwest and is an associate director of the Whidbey Institute.

In a conversation a week ago, Parks described a friend, a committed mother, who was asked by her daughter to "watch a video with me." She eagerly agreed to the shared activity, and grabbed the clean laundry to fold while she watched. Her daughter confronted her, "I thought this time was for me."

There would be other times, of course, when folding laundry together would be an excellent activity. But her daughter designed this as a time for her mother to be fully present with her.

She knew her mother would not be fully present with her as long as she was also folding laundry. Fortunately, she was strong and bright enough to confront her mother.

Fully present can mean getting caught up in the same kind of wonder and enjoyment that the young person is feeling. It might be a child’s interest in a bug or an animated movie.

It might be the offbeat humor of a young teen watching a silly movie. It might mean listening to a CD together or going to the park or helping a youngster clean his room.

Being fully present often means following a youngster’s lead rather than instructing, directing or correcting him or her. That’s harder than many parents think.

Being fully present with children is not always around the fun stuff. Suffering is at the opposite end from wonder in every human’s experiences

Being fully present with an elementary school child might be listening to them cry when they feel like nobody likes them. Being fully present with middle school children might include hearing about being bullied at school, or about trying to befriend a bully for protection.

Just as hard, being fully present with middle school student may lead parents to realize that their own children are school bullies.

Being fully present with their children and teenagers changes parents.

Being fully present with children reminds adults of their own childhoods.

But being fully present also demands that parents’ own childhoods not be what drives their response to their children. Being fully present not only reminds adults that childhoods are alike, but also reminds them how they and their children are different.

Most parents probably don’t decide in conscious, deliberate ways to invest time in their children by being fully present. Even when they do try to do so, there are obstacles. A later column will discuss these difficulties with parents being fully present.

For now, it’s worth knowing that slowing things down enough to be fully present with their children may be the best response to an overly frenetic pace.

Bill France, a father of three, is a child advocate in the criminal justice system and has worked as director of clinical programs at Luther Child Center in Everett. Send e-mail to bsjf@gte.net.