About Babies
“Daddy, Play With
Me!”
An
excerpt from: Hidden Messages: What Our Words and
Actions are Really Telling Our Children
By Elizabeth Pantley
The clock in Jeff’s car glows 6:40 P.M. as he rolls into the
driveway after another long and tiring day at work. He opens the
door to his home with a weary sigh and drops the mail next to the
answering machine, which is blinking in that incessant, anxious way
that demands listening. All he wants is a relaxing evening with no
bosses, clients, or coworkers to please.
He peeks into his wife’s home office and greets her warmly. As they
chat about their day, she asks if he’d mind fixing dinner so she can
finish up a few things. “No problem,” he assures her. Before heading
to the kitchen, he pauses to savor a moment’s peace, silently
planning out the next few hours: check the mail, listen to messages,
take a nice hot shower, change into sweats, fix a quick dinner . . .
“Hi, Daddy! Play with me?” Snapped out of his reverie, Jeff puts on
a smile and bends to wrap a hug around the giggling little angel
with the hopeful eyes. He twirls her around in big circles and
plants kisses on her nose. “Hey, my little Lily-flower!” he croons.
He buries his nose in her soft hair, loving the little-child feel
and scent of her. Laughing with glee, Lily cherishes these sparkling
moments in her daddy’s arms; craving more, she implores, “Play with
me?”
“Hey, punkin’, I have some things to do; then we’ll play later.”
“Just a little while, Daddy?” she pleads with a smile. But
looking at his face, she suddenly knows he’d never drop everything
just for some silly play, but she can’t help asking one last time.
When the expected answer comes, she wanders off resignedly to watch
the TV show that’s always on at this time, always on for her when
Daddy’s not.
Lily watches her program, all the while counting the minutes on the
clock. Jeff loses himself in the mail, the newspaper, and the
answering machine, looking forward to the completion of all his
daily responsibilities so that he can play with his daughter. After
some time on the computer reading E-mail, he trudges upstairs,
loosening his tie. He can almost feel the steamy warmth of the
shower, the comfort of those old sweats, the . . . wait, what is
this?
He turns to find a beaming little girl, who’d sneaked up the stairs
behind him, given away by the soft thumping of her tiny feet. She
musters all the vocal sweetness that she imagines a good girl to
have and asks, “Can we play now, Daddy?” She doesn’t want to
bother him, doesn’t want to pester. She just wants him close to her,
laughing his silly laugh just for her.
What Jeff hears is persistence—a trait he will someday appreciate in
her as an adult, but one that annoys him today. So, with a ruffle of
her hair, he dismisses her with strained patience. “In a little bit,
Lily. Why don’t you go ask Mommy if she can play with you now?”
Not so easily put off, she is in position at the bottom of the
stairs when he descends some time later. Her little face is fairly
bursting with the effort of holding back her request. She doesn’t
want to annoy him, doesn’t want to be inconvenient, doesn’t want to
be bad—and so, says nothing, hoping he’ll remember his promise to
play “later.”
But he doesn’t.
“Ready for some dinner?” he asks, walking quickly past her in an
effort to stave off a few repeats of her “Want to play?”
chorus. He enters the kitchen and begins pulling items from the
refrigerator. Just then, the telephone rings, and little ears
listen—as they always do—as Jeff answers. “Hello? Hey, Steven. How
are ya? Great. Did you catch the game Sunday? I can’t believe he
missed that play . . . ” And so he is lost to her again, this time
to adult conversation, phone tucked between ear and shoulder.
Maybe if I’m just quiet and smile real big, Lily thinks. So
she looks up at him with every fiber of her being poured into her
smile, every good thing in her soul spilling from her eyes. Still on
the phone, her daddy smiles back vacantly and plops a plate of
dinner down for his daughter, then disappears into his wife’s office
with a plate for her, too. Lily’s best smile fades as she quietly
eats her dinner to the hum of Daddy’s voice on the phone.
Afterward, of course, the parents are busy. There’s dinner to be
cleaned up, garbage to be taken out, bills to pay . . . And all the
while, Jeff’s little one—who naturally will not be little
forever—patiently and proudly waits beside her latest Lego
masterpiece. She just knows he’ll notice it soon. She knows
it’s the marvel of engineering brilliance sure to draw him into her
world. But the doorbell rings, and Jeff strides right past her to
answer. Perhaps after the visitor leaves, she wonders . . .
It’s Rahul, their neighbor. He needs help getting his lawn tractor
started. “Hate to bother you, Jeff, but you think you might have a
second to look at it?”
“Of course,” Jeff replies, his thoughts registering the day last
week when Rahul was there at 6:00 A.M. to jump-start Jeff’s car.
“That’s what good neighbors are for.”
After letting his wife know where he’s bound, he reaches down to
plant kisses on his daughter’s soft cheeks. “Be right back, punkin’,”
he says. And he leaves too quickly to notice the silent tears that
have begun to run down those same cheeks so hastily kissed, soft
cheeks that are soon buried in pillows. When Jeff returns, she is
asleep, dreaming of moving out and becoming a neighbor who could
ring the doorbell, call Daddy on the phone, and send E-mails to him.
The Hidden
Message
“You are not as important to me as the mail, the messages, the
dinner, the phone call or the neighbor. I love you, but I’m too busy
for you—and there’s always later, there’s always tomorrow.”
Think About
It
Children perceive time, and what we do with it, differently from the
way adults do. By about age thirty, we adults barely notice the
precious seconds. In the currency of time, they’re merely pennies,
hardly able to buy anything of value. For little ones, however,
every moment is weighty with possibility and so passes heavily and
slowly. Consider, for instance, the evening that we just
witnessed—it passed particularly slowly for the little girl but it
blew past the man who is her father.
Seconds become minutes, of course, and minutes become hours. And
imperceptibly, hours become decades. One day, Jeff may turn around
to play with his little girl, only to find a young woman too busy
tending her own life to notice—after all, she has learned by his
example. What a common tragedy! Ask any parent of grown children,
and he or she invariably will attest to how fast it all goes. As the
popular maxim forewarns: One comment you’ll never hear on a person’s
deathbed is “I wish I’d have put in more overtime.” Instead, we all
know the final plea is much more likely to be for more time with
those whose love fills and sustains us. The hard truth is that we
have only a relatively small sliver of time in which to give our
children the gifts of our experience, patience, wisdom, and heart.
Naturally, obligations intrude on our every day. We perceive these
obligations from an adult point of view, sorting through them,
prioritizing as we go. We give a potential interruption to our
mental calendars a quick once-over and make a snap decision: adjust
the plan, or stick to it? But however we triage the callings in our
lives, time marches on. The work gets done. The meals get prepared.
The house gets cleaned. Things work out. Of necessity, we allot time
for the chores that keep us fed, clothed, clean; these things push
themselves into our plans by their very nature. Other items seize
our attention with their urgency—a flashing message machine, a
ringing phone, a buzzing doorbell. Certain activities, however,
don’t call to us so loudly. Yet, these can have an impact more
profound than all the others combined: activities such as walking in
a park, visiting relatives, tossing a baseball…or building a Lego
city. These are the experiences that build up a soul.
What would happen if, today, all parents made their children their
top priority? Nowadays, we often complain about teenagers and their
lack of respect for adults, and we worry about the anger and lack of
direction that seems to plague them to the point of violence. Yet I
meet many parents who tell me that their teenagers are wonderful
young people, and that they enjoy their children now, just
as they always have. Therein lies an important lesson: We need
to begin, right now, at this very moment, to see each second as a
gift, as an opportunity to savor where we all are now—
whether we do this by playing, chatting, or simply being together
with our children. In so doing, we may weave a lifeline that
continues to hold throughout the years. When that Lego city gets
built, so does the foundation to a future. And a minute of time for
a child will someday be worth its equivalent in hours to the adult
she becomes. The time we spend with our children at this very
moment—nurturing, teaching and loving them—is the substance that
helps mold them into the people that they will become.
Changes You
Can Make
Review the priorities in your life, make a list of your top five,
and begin investing the bulk of your time and energy in those
choices. If you are a parent, your list—of course—should include
your children. Keep your list of five handy, and refer to it
whenever a decision arises. Ask yourself, “Does what I am doing,
or about to do, fit into my list of priorities?”
Unlike much advice, this way of living is not “easier said than
done.” On the contrary, it’s “easier done than said”! You’ll often
be surprised to discover that it doesn’t take hours to fill a
child’s need for attention.
Sometimes fifteen minutes will fill your child’s cup—and then allow
you to tend to your daily rituals without that nagging sense of
guilt, or that feeling that something essential is missing. In this
story of Jeff and Lily, if he had dropped everything upon his
arrival home and given Lily thirty minutes of undivided attention,
he might have fulfilled her need for his love. She might then have
been happy to scamper off and allow him to get to his business, or
perhaps trailed along with him, letting their connection linger
through the evening.
Of course, some daily tasks must be done regardless of their
placement of your list. The laundry would definitely not be
in my top five, but it still needs to be done! However, having your
list will help ensure that these “maintenance’’ tasks are done with
the proper acknowledgement of their importance. This means that I
may decide that a game of Monopoly with my children is worth
postponing the laundry until after they’ve gone to bed.
As for those must-do tasks, some can be undertaken with a child
included as helper or as company—a three-year-old can sit beside you
with her plastic kitchen set “preparing” her own dinner, as you
prepare dinner for the family; a five-year-old can sort socks or
fold hand towels as you fold the other laundry; a seven-year-old can
accompany you on your round of errands. In each case, you will very
likely enjoy the time talking together.
When you decree that your family and your children are your
priority, and that you want, and need, to spend more time with them,
your daily decisions will become easier. You may even begin to
ascertain that some goals you had rated as “top priority” are
supremely unimportant. And as a natural and direct effect, these
will fall away, leaving you with two undeniable gains: a heightened
and refined sense of values, and the freedom to pursue them.
(Excerpted with permission by NTC/Contemporary Publishing Group
Inc. from Hidden Messages – What Our Words and Actions are Really
Telling Our Children by Elizabeth Pantley, copyright 2001)
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