Last week my son started school. It brought a lot of excitement, change and adjustment to a different routine but also awareness how time goes and how much he has grown.
We were fortunate that before school he spent three years at a wonderful nursery. It was the best place for growth, with amazing and caring teachers, many outdoor activities, an allotment and above all a head teacher who truly loves her work and gives it everything.
On the last day of nursery (after we enjoyed country dancing with the children) the head teacher gathered all parents around and gave a short speech. It was informal and very powerful. I will not go into detail, but I would like to emphasise one thing she said when talking about what we can do for our children when they start school. She said that the most important thing that we can give them is time. They don’t need anything else but our time and our attention.
This really stayed with me. There is so much truth in it. It is all about being there for our children, being present - which means putting down phones, stop scrolling, checking social media and dealing with thousands of other things.
A great Slovak writer, film director and screenwriter Eva Borušovičová who sadly passed away earlier this year said in one of her works: “We look at our phones even though our child is with us and wants to talk, we let our phone distract us while we play or talk, we carry it with us everywhere as if it were a breathing apparatus and not a communication device, we check our phones as soon as we wake up, before we hug our children, we make phone calls, text messages, read statuses on social networks even while driving, at the playground, at dinner..”
Does this resonate with you? Do you recognise any aspects of it?
Giving our children full attention, spending quality time with them, gathering experiences and having fun – these are some of the key things that will stay with them and enrich their growth (as well as ours). Time is often the most precious thing we have. We feel we don’t have enough of it but weirdly, we have exactly what we need. We just need to reorganise our priorities and reinvest time differently. For some, this might mean some big changes.
Although this blog is about spending time with your children, I would want to look at it as spending time with the people you love in general. It is also a reflection over where your time goes and an opportunity to pause – to check in if you are truly present when your children or other close ones ask you a question, want to share or show you something. Being present is one of the key things that strengthens relationships, and it has a positive impact on your wellbeing too.
Who will you give your time today?