QUICK YOU ONLY HAVE 30 SECONDS TO ANSWER EACH QUESTION ABOUT YOUR CHILDREN!
Where are your children now and what are they doing?
What is their favorite song?
Who is their best friend?
What is their favorite subject in school?
Sadly there are parents that can not answer any of the questions I have asked about their children. In today’s society we seem to be more disconnected from our loved ones more than ever! That should not be the case in the age of social media we should know pretty much everything about them just by looking at their Face book page. But I bet the ones that can’t answer the questions about their kids can tell you all about their favorite You Tuber or reality star!
The sad truth is we as parents have no one to blame but our self’s for the disconnect with our family’s! I know that’s going to be hard for some of you to hear but it is the truth. Think about it you spend all day at work. Your kids spend all day at school. When we come home we just some times to our self’s to unwind right? But that few minutes turn into hours because the kids go to their room to do homework, play their video games, or they are watching TV. But they are not to blame for this because as they are doing that you are on your phone scrolling Face book or hell you might even be reading this post.
Now I am not saying that I have not done this. To tell you the truth I was probably the worst one at it. I use to be in the Army so I was gone a lot for training or I was deployed. Come to think about it I am surprised my children knew who I was! Then after the Army I worked for the rail road. I was gone a lot for that job as well and when I was home I purposely put TV’s in all the kids’ room with cable, Xboxes and a ton of games. All because I thought I needed time to unwind after work. But as time went on I seen less and less of my children. They would rather be in their room watching TV or playing their games. I wasn’t raising my children their games and TV was!
On top of that I started to notice that my relationship with my wife was changing as well. We were the type that would talk about any and everything with one another. We talked all the time. But as time went on and the more I worked our time together was spent sitting next to one another but we would be mindlessly scrolling face book or what ever else we would look up. Our conversations turned into something like this: “hey honey you will never guess what so and so wrote on their page! Or Hey will not believe what photo so and so posted today!” It was no longer us asking how each others day was. Even the simple question of hey where are the kids were now getting a response of I don’t know they maybe in there rooms I think. We use to always know where the kids were but not any more. At that point I knew something had to be done. I love my family and I wanted us to be one unit again. I am here to tell you that you can get that back if you want it.
Now for us we went the extreme route. My wife and I talked about it and we had the great idea to go off grid and start a homestead! To tell you the truth my kids hated it at first! They didn’t know why now all of a sudden we wanted to get to know them. Wow that really hurt me. I never wanted to not know them it just sort of happened as time went on. Then they thought we were being mean to them because we no longer have cable and we didn’t have the power capability to run all the TV’s and Xboxes. But as time went on everyone started to get use to it and we could not be happier. We have become closer than ever with our children. They will talk to us now about what ever is on their mind, we play games together, laugh, and tell stories rather than mindlessly scrolling our electronic devices. We now watch movies together every Friday night. We call it family movie night. As for my wife and I we have become closer to one another, we are more respectful to one another, and we are more passionate to one another like never before. We now talk to one another about our hopes and dreams that we have for our homestead, or family, and our lives together. I truly am the happiest I have ever been in a long time.
I am not saying that you have to go to the extremes that we did. But you can start doing little things like maybe a game night with the kids, or something as simple as giving them a hug every morning and night, or maybe putting a note in their lunch saying: Guess what! I LOVE YOU! It is time to start getting our family’s back! So why don’t we start today?
I know this post is going to upset some of you. So let it be known that I am not saying that you are a bad parent. I am not saying that I am a good parent. But I am saying we need to start being parents again! I am saying that we need to start putting our self back into our children’s life. I am saying that we need to bring the Family aspect back and we need to stop letting the Schools, TV, Games, Social Media, Their Friends, and Phones raise our children!
BRING BACK PARENTING
BRING BACK FAMILY