John
weighed seven pounds, seven ounces on the day he was
born. His first days of life were highlighted by bouts
of crying and long periods of sleeping. On the drive
home from the hospital, a few days later, John’s
mother glanced down, looked at her new baby, and for a
moment she smiled.
Then she looked ahead. “Honey,” she began, as
she stared at her husband, “I know we decided to
keep our careers so that we can be financially secure, but
now I’m having second thoughts. I want to give our
son the most attention we can. I want us to reconsider
having me stay at home with him.”
Her husband shook his head in frustration. “We
discussed this, remember?” he shot back. “We
can’t afford to have one of us at home all the time.
It doesn’t make sense.” For the next few
minutes the proud new parents shared their thoughts and
uneasiness of leaving their child in the care of someone
other than his parents.
Conversations like the one above are common among new
parents. Every parent wants the best for their child, yet
mapping out how to exactly deliver that parenting has
become more and more difficult. This struggle of parenting
in contemporary society can be encapsulated by one word:
time. We know that parenting takes time, but modern
parenting has divided the concept of time into two
categories – quality time and quantity time.
For so many hardworking parents “quality time”
has become a very important concept. But what exactly is
quality time? At a very basic level it can be defined as
an activity that promotes communicating and sharing. For
time to be deemed “quality time” it needs to
be enriching and stimulating. Spending time watching
television isn’t the ideal, but spending time
working on a project or playing a game together is. A
quick look at the historical development of the notion of
quality time reveals some important information. Quality
time arrived on the scene in the early 1970’s.
Research indicated that the more actively mothers were
involved with their babies, talking and cooing and so
forth, the better it was for the babies’ cognitive
and social development. The implication was that in order
to have high-quality time, a fair amount of pure time had
to be invested. Therefore, quality time originally assumed
quantity time, but eventually the “quality not
quantity” philosophy of parenting won out, simply
because in our over scheduled and stressed society there
was little opportunity for quantity time. Parents hoped
that quality time at least made up for the lack of
quantity time—so long as it was better and bigger,
and more meaningful time.
Yet this ideology is flawed because parents simply
can’t plan special moments of bonding or epiphanies
with their child as they are unpredictable. They tend to
happen within the every day mundane activities of
parenting and within the notion of quantity time.
St. Theophan the Recluse touches on the issue of parenting
time in his book titled: On the Upbringing of Children. He
advises parents to preserve the blessing that baptism
gives their child and to immerse their lives in its
upbringing. The father and mother are to “disappear
into the child and put their whole soul into his
welfare,” he says. One of St. Theophan’s
teachings on the upbringing of children centers on the
establishment of developing a sound foundation – a
foundation that takes a lot of effort and time. The
development of this foundation is necessary to stand firm
against what he refers to as the “shock waves of
youth.” In other words, everything parents say and
do in the early years is reflected in the latter ones. A
great deal of this depends on the time we spend on our
children. Much of good parenting also involves discipline
and teaching. It’s through this process that
children not only develop a sound conscience as good
behavior becomes automatic; but it’s also through
this process that good, productive habits become cemented
into the child’s life. These skills need close and
constant monitoring. And this is why quantity time is also
important.
“The reason why the grace of Baptism is not
preserved,” St. Theophan states, “is because
the order, rules and laws of an upbringing are not
kept.” And so the challenge for new parents is not
only to establish order and rules, but to be around to see
that their children live by them. Spiritually, we know
that children form their ideas about God through their
parents. It’s in the praying together, the listening
of stories about Saints, in reading the Bible and
especially in modeling Christlike behavior, that children
form a lasting perception of God. When this doesn’t
occur there is a void. “The family is recognized as
the ‘home church,’ says Sophie Koulomzin in
her book Our Church and Our Children, “and
the task of parents is really a kind of a lay priesthood.
Within a Christian family our Christian faith must be
incarnated; it must be brought to life in the daily,
hourly experience of living.”
Make no mistake, parenting isn’t simple and there
are no cookie-cutter families. There are many legitimate
reasons for parents to leave their child to the care of a
friend or a day care center. Nowadays, most couples rely
on two incomes and many single parents are trying to raise
their child with minimum support. However, our faith calls
for time to be both quality and quantity; therefore
it’s good for parents to openly assess how much of a
balance there is in the way they parent. For if parents
want their children to develop consistent habits, if they
want their children to develop a quality relationship with
Christ, they have to sacrifice time and energy.
Next time your child asks you what time it is, and you
look to give the chronological answer, remember that the
most important time together isn’t measured merely
by minutes, but by quantity and quality time.
25 / 10 / 2011
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