How To Spell LOVE
I have written about this before, but it is worth updating and repeating.
Before my oldest son was born and my wife and I became parents for the first time, my wonderful mother-in-law gave us a precious gift – a little book of advice and blessings on parenting that she had been working on for us for a long time.
One of the little insights that has stuck with me the most was how to spell “Love.”
“Love,” she said, “is spelled “T.I.M.E. In our rushed world full of demands and distractions people try to give their kids brief moments of ‘quality time.” The truth is though, that quality time happens inside of quantity time. You spend enough time together and then somewhere in the midst of that something special happens – quality time happens.”
“More than anything else, what your children are going to want and need from you is your time and attention. That is what will make them feel loved.”
I’ve been thinking about this advice and insight especially lately because of something my son recently said. We were asking him what he wanted for Christmas and he said he wanted some “I need you now cards.” He explained that these would be cards that if he spent them by giving them to us, it didn’t matter whether we were on the phone or working on a computer, we had to stop what we were doing and pay attention to him.
This might make it sound like he gets less of our attention than he really does. What it does accurately, I think, is illustrate my mother-in-law’s sound advice on how to spell love and what our children most want from us.
I think this isn’t just true of our children though. I think that precious gift of time and attention is probably the best way to give love to all the people in our lives.
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