English
EspañolThe time and space in which you share life with your children are your best gift as a father and mother – if the children see their parents united, warm, and loving, even more so. It is an evil perversion to think that you are “wasting” your time on your children.
Text
“…Every child has a right to receive love from a mother and a father; both are necessary for a child’s integral and harmonious development. As the Australian Bishops have observed, each of the spouses “contributes in a distinct way to the upbringing of a child. Respecting a child’s dignity means affirming his or her need and natural right to have a mother and a father”. (The Joy of Love, n.172)
Commentary
We are always parents, no matter how old we are. Our children always need their parents. At every age and in very different ways, they need the presence, love, and advice from their parents; even if the advice might seem relatively light or too respectful, it is still a deep and irreplaceable companionship. However, this parental presence and companionship are sown by sharing life with the children while they are young, growing up, and maturing.
I agree with Barbara Jhonson´s advice: “To be in your children´s memories tomorrow, you need to be present in their lives today.”
Indeed, it is not easy to be parents, but it is inconceivable to see how the percentage of children “physically and morally abandoned” by their parents increases. In counseling, I constantly hear these phrases: “I do not know my father, he abandoned mom when I was in her womb”; “each of my parents has another family, I live with my grandparents”; “I do not see mom and dad all day long, they come home late from work”; “mom does not even know what university term I am in, she only pays the tuition and schooling fees”; “I went out to dinner with my father, and it was complicated for us to have a dialogue, we had no topic of conversation”; “my house is chaos, everyone shouts and insults each other, there is no control of anything or anyone”; “we never have lunch or dinner together, each person eats at the time they want and in the place they want”; “my father and mother live in the same house, but they lead separate lives”…
What should we do? There are no magic recipes for family health. However, what is most important is being present in a loving manner every day through small details. My experience in counseling is the following: do not just solve your children’s problems; above all, discover how they feel; get more involved in each other’s lives, share activities in your free time; dialogue when there are problems, do not just punish; give them confidence by respecting and appreciating their points of view; reconcile early and do not hold grudges; eat together around the table; listen to each other and show interest in how the other has been doing during the day; go for a walk, play at an amusement park, laugh and enjoy each other’s company. Let your children see how their parents love each other very much, joke and make amends after a quarrel.
