Of course, they like going to get ice cream. They love going places. They love screens. They love going shopping.
These are easy things for our kids to ask for. They are also, for the most part, easy things for us as parents to give.
But in the end, what they’re after, what they’ll remember, is something far simpler but much more elusive in our very busy world. What they want, what they need, what they deserve, is us.
What our kids want is a parent who is willing to get down on the floor and play with them. What our kids deserve is a parent who will really listen to them when they talk—giving them the attention we for some reason seem to reserve only for work or our phone. What our kids crave is for an adult to enter their world, to take it seriously, to be interested and open and available.
And it’s tragic how fleetingly and rarely we give them this! If they ask us to drive them somewhere, we’ll do it. But if they ask for our attention for more than a few minutes, we balk. We spoil them with presents, but our presence? No, that is apparently off limits.
Time with our kids is precious and finite (we have a challenge coin about this). So let’s make a commitment today: to put down our phones, to be fully present, and to give our children what they truly want and need—our undivided attention and love. It’s not just what they deserve—it’s better than anything else they could ask for.
