Being Present as a Parent

Transcription

1 Being Present as a Parent Overview Suggestions on how to be present as a parent no matter how demanding your job is or how young or old your children are. Keeping work from spilling over into family life Showing your child you care Being attuned to when your child seems to need you Listening to your child Helping your child understand that family comes first When your job is demanding and you are working hard, it can be difficult to focus on family and be as present with your children as you d like to be. Being present as a parent means many things. It means being there for your child -- to really listen and understand what your child is feeling and thinking and to offer love, support, and encouragement. It means being able to turn work off at the end of your workday so that you are able to focus on family. It means being aware of how you are responding when you are with your children. Following are suggestions to help you be present as a parent no matter what is going on at work or how young or old your children are. These suggestions are not meant to imply that you need to be present as a parent 100 percent of the time when you are with your child, but that you do so on a very regular basis, especially when your children seem to need you. Keeping work from spilling over into family life For most people who work a demanding or absorbing job, turning work off at the end of the workday to focus on family is no simple matter. It takes practice and being intentional about your actions. In order to be present as a parent -- fully there for your children -- it s important to learn ways to keep work from spilling over into your family life. Here are some ideas: Find ways to separate from work at the end of your workday. You might use your drive home from work to switch moods -- by listening to music you like or spending quiet time in the car reflecting. To decompress from work, some people change their clothes when they get home, take a short rest alone, or go for a brief walk to get some air and space. If you work from home, establish routines to help you turn work off. Some telecommuters walk the dog at the end of the workday or spend some time reading the newspaper. It doesn t really matter what you do. What s important is that you create some kind of routine that helps you ease back into your personal life at the end of each day. Be conscious of how you are when you walk in the door from work. You may feel tired or tense after a long day at work, but try not to let these feelings spill over into your family life. Try to overlook the dirty dishes in the sink, the toys on the floor, or the homework that s still undone, and focus right away on connecting

2 2 Being Present as a Parent with your family. Try to make the way you greet your child a positive interaction. How are you? I missed you. What should we have for dinner? Focus on relationships. Let the chores and homework wait. Change the things you can change at work to reduce sources of stress and overload. A demanding workload is one of the leading causes of stress. You might sit down with your manager and look at your workload. Perhaps there are items with a lower priority that could be eliminated. Perhaps a tight deadline could be extended. Maybe another employee could be brought in to help on a project. Try to come up with solutions to reduce your stress and overload. You may not be able to fix everything, but starting off by fixing even one thing will help improve your energy and mood. Learn to recognize and manage symptoms of stress. The stress we bring home with us affects our moods, our family lives, and our children. In her excellent book, Ask the Children: The Breakthrough Study That Reveals How to Succeed at Work and Parenting (Morrow, 1999), Ellen Galinsky notes that children across all age groups pick up on their parents stress. They wish their parents could feel less tired and stressed when they return home from work. Learning to recognize and manage symptoms of stress will help you be calmer and more available as a parent. The symptoms of stress include: sleep problems; trouble concentrating; headaches; stomachaches; neck, shoulder, or back pain; heart palpitations; lack of energy. Take steps to reduce your stress: - Get regular exercise. Even something as easy as walking 30 minutes three to five times a week helps relieve stress. Take a 30-minute break at lunchtime and go out for a walk. Find other ways to get regular exercise, too. - Practice relaxation techniques such as deep breathing, yoga, and meditation. Regular use of relaxation techniques, even if just for a few minutes once or twice a day, can have the effect of reducing stress all day long. - Make time for yourself and for doing things you like to do. - Take advantage of the programs and benefits your employer offers to help you reduce stress. If you are having one of those days and you can t let go of work-related tension or stress, explain this to your child. You might say, I had a bad day today. Work was really hard. You know how sometimes you re really cranky? Well, today I m feeling cranky. It s not your fault. People just have bad days at work sometimes. I m going to take a time-out until I feel a little bit better. It is an important lesson that verbalizing your feelings can in itself be a positive outlet for stress.

3 3 Being Present as a Parent Showing your child you care Here are reminders of ways to show your child you care: Make time for family. Commit to having family time every day or as often as you can. During family time, let your children be your focus. Ask family members to take a short break from distractions such as TV, phones, and ipods during a designated family time each day. Have family meals together, help with homework, read to your child, be a good listener. Older children value family time as much as younger children do. Stop work at a reasonable hour and spend time with your child. If you have to, pick up your work later, after dinner and your child s bedtime or early in the morning. Take phone calls from friends or co-workers after your child goes to bed so you are available as a parent. Make every effort to attend special events in your child s life. These can include sports games, music recitals, and school programs, as well as significant rites of passage such as graduation. Plan special things to do with your child. For example, you might plan ahead and arrange it with your boss and co-workers to take a day off to go on a school field trip. Or begin work earlier once a week so that you can leave earlier to take a regular afternoon off, sign up to lead your child s scout troop, coach the soccer team, or the high school debate club. Spend time with each of your children individually. Try to spend regular time with each of your children doing something your child likes to do. With a younger child, you might read a story at bedtime. With a teenager, have lunch or dinner out once a week to catch up and connect. Remember that just being together is often enough. You don t always have to be doing something. Put your laptop away and turn off your cell phone when you are focusing on your child. Take time off and spend it with your family. When you go on vacation, unplug from and your laptop and connect with family. Try very hard not to let work intrude on vacation time. Consider cutting back on other commitments in your life so you can be more available at home. Working at a full-time job, raising children, in addition to having other outside obligations can make it very hard to be present as a parent. Look at your schedule and all the things you are doing. Then prioritize. Maybe dropping a commitment so you re as available as you want to be for your family makes sense. Or select activities that you can involve your children in, such as volunteering at a food pantry together or working on a PTA activity where your children can help out.

4 4 Being Present as a Parent Being attuned to when your child seems to need you Children let you know in many ways that they need you as a parent, so pay attention to those cues and clues. Among the things to look for are: Your child is hover-crafting -- hanging around you without saying or doing something specific. Your child is whining, clinging, or demanding -- it may be that he or she is about to go into a growth spurt or that something is wrong and your child needs your attention. Your child is particularly quiet or seems sad. Your child shows signs of stress or anxiety such as sleep problems or difficulty separating from you. Listening to your child One of the things that children told me in the research that I conducted for Ask the Children, says Ellen Galinsky, is that parents can be there, but they re not really there. They re not really listening. As parent, we can sometimes be so consumed, still thinking about work or whatever else is going on in our life, that we re not really paying attention to our kids. Sometimes you might think you re listening well to your child or teenager when you aren t. Being present as a parent means being aware of your listening skills, working on those skills, and being ready to listen when your child wants to talk. Children want to talk with their parents. But they often don t know how to go about broaching a subject. Learn to read your child s cues. It may not always be obvious that your child wants to talk. She may stand by you in the kitchen when you re cooking and say nothing at first, then start a conversation slowly. Or she may sit in the car while you re driving, not talk at all, and then tell a story about a friend or a problem she s facing. When these openings occur, focus on what your child is saying and listen. Listen intently, even if the conversation seems to be about small or trivial things. It s the mundane, everyday conversations that are sometimes the most fruitful and that will help you really get to know your child or that lead to the big issues they want to talk about but don t know how to bring up. Try not to let yourself become distracted. When you are having a conversation with your child, turn the radio off, turn the television off or down, and don t glance at your incoming . Let voice mail take your calls. Find times to talk. Your child might be talkative at dinnertime, or just before going to bed. Many children are most talkative when you re driving in the car together. Be in tune for those special unexpected moments when the opportunity crops up for a meaningful exchange.

5 5 Being Present as a Parent Find out what s going on in your child s life. Ask specific questions like, So what do you think of your new math teacher? Ask questions that can t be answered with just a yes or no. For example, you could say, I haven t heard you talking about Sam a lot lately. What s going on with him? Be open to hearing what your child has to say. When I consider what was one of my mother s greatest gifts to me, writes Ellen Galinsky in Ask the Children, it was permission to talk about what was or wasn t working in our family life... I could tell her how I felt about her parenting and she listened with true respect. These are often problems that can be solved. Be open to how your child would like to communicate, too. You might prefer to talk with your child face-to-face or on the phone. But she might like sometimes to text or you, and might open up more readily if you re willing to do this. Consider learning how to send text messages if you aren t familiar with the process. Short encouraging texts to your child may lay the groundwork for a faceto-face conversation later in the day. Helping your child understand that family comes first You can help your child understand that family comes first in these and other ways: Try to create a schedule that allows for family time every day. Be home in time for dinner with your children on a regular basis as often as possible. Take an active role in raising your children. Find ways to recharge so that you return home from work with some energy left for your family. Modeling healthy ways of handling stress will teach your child to do the same. Choose family over work on a regular basis when you are facing a conflict between the two. The program that provided this publication has many additional resources on building a strong relationship with your child or teenager. Developed with funding from the IBM Global Work/Life Fund and Texas Instruments, members of the American Business Collaboration, and with the help of the Families and Work Institute and Ellen Galinsky, based on her book, Ask the Children: The Breakthrough Study That Reveals How to Succeed at Work and Parenting. Also written with the help of Mary Beth Klotz, Ph.D. Dr. Klotz is a Nationally Certified School Psychologist (NCSP) and an experienced special education teacher and administrator. She has worked for the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) as the Director of IDEA Projects and Technical Assistance for the past 11 years. Previously, Dr. Klotz taught and worked as a school psychologist and special education teacher for 15 years in a variety of public school settings. 2004, 2010 Ceridian Corporation, the Families and Work Institute, IBM, and Texas Instruments. All rights reserved