The quality of a family

Why is it that some families, even while having limited time to spend together in today’s fast paced world, remain deeply connected and are there for each other through thick and thin, while others simply exist together in a common space and are unable to forge very deep bonds despite spending a major portion of their lives together, under the same roof? Relationship experts and therapists say it is not the amount of time you spend together as a family, it is the quality of the time you give to each other, especially to your children, that makes for true bonding and support as a cohesive family.

The phrase ‘Quality Time’, which has been around since the 1970s, refers to time that is set aside for paying full and undivided attention to a particular person/s or issue. This concept is of special significance in the context of the parent-child relationship, because it is the quality of time that you spend with your child that gives her critical mental and psychological inputs and shapes her emotional intelligence and personality. It is also crucial in forging close family ties which give the child a core of resilience and inner strength to grow into a balanced, happy and successful individual.

Says American entertainer Brandy Norwood: “Your children can be around you all day, but if you don’t spend quality time with them and you don’t pay attention to them and talk to them and listen to them, it doesn’t matter that they’re just around you”.

What is ‘Quality Time’?
‘Quality time’ is time spent doing an activity that is meaningful to the parent and child. It is time when family members really get to know each other. Quality time is spent focusing attention on each other and sharing thoughts and feelings. It is like creating a storehouse of emotional support and mental strength, which will be a bulwark to strengthen the family members in bad times and a heaven of inner peace, love and security in good times.

The concept of Quality Time assumes added significance in today’s world because busy lifestyles and high stress factors are tearing families apart. Says Delhi based psychiatrist Dr. Vimal Kumar, “A family that has omitted to create close bonding amongst its members is highly likely to fall apart under the manifold pressures of contemporary lifestyles. This is where we need to understand the crucial necessity of taking out quality time for the family, even in the midst of punishing schedules and deadlines”.

Why Quality Time?

Children need to know they are loved unconditionally. The cry of children today is, ‘Love me for who I am, not what I do. Love me for being who I am, even when I am naughty, not winning, placing, and showing’. This does not mean that parents have to approve of everything the child does. What it does mean however, is that even though the child misbehaves, we still love and accept the child and provide support. We help children develop positive self-esteem by communicating the value we feel for them. Words of encouragement and love help provide children with the courage to try new things without worrying excessively about not being able to do them. And spending quality time with them is the most effective way of giving them this feeling of being cherished.

Children learn about families from the time they spend in their own families. They learn about birth and caring for another person when a new baby comes home from the hospital. They learn about loss when a family member dies. They learn about marriage and relationships by watching their mothers and fathers interact. They learn about trust at home from their parents, and from being trusted. By living in a family that spends quality time together, communicating these values through actions, children learn to share, how to stand up for their own rights, and how to love another person.

Adding Value and Quality to Family Life

Spending time with our children can be fun and educational for us and for them. The activity does need not be costly, but rather one that satisfies both the parent and the child.
Much of the child’s basic learning takes place in the many informal situations that occur daily in the life of the family. These informal occasions for learning include all the times the family members are together doing ordinary things, such as getting dressed, talking over the day’s happenings, dealing with problems, interacting with people outside the family, taking baths, eating, and so forth. To help children grow and mature well, parents need to help children learn about life and living in today’s society. Thus, the quality time that parents spend with a child becomes all the more important.

As the world becomes more and more aware of the importance of quality time with the family, a recent ‘happiness poll’ in UK shows that the largest proportion of respondents consider ‘quality time with the family’ more important for happiness than material possessions, money and career goals. In fact, for most parents, spending time with their children was even more important than relaxing or luxury holidays.

New research reveals an overwhelming 95 per cent of parents actually believe the key to happiness lies in spending quality family time together. The new research study of couples pre- and post-parenthood has found that mothers and fathers are shunning sports cars, jewelry and posh clothes in favour of what they say is the ultimate luxury—spending time with their family.

Balancing Priorities: Career and Family Commitments

However, research also shows there may still be some way to go before parents are really able put aside work related guilt and spend more time with their families, even though they yearn for it. While they overwhelmingly agree that family time with their children is the key to happiness, two-thirds admit that they had worked hard to achieve financial goals at the expense of it. This proportion is especially high (more than 65 per cent) among high profile professional fathers in urban areas who feel under greater pressure to work hard at the expense of time with their children.

A strong family finds that opportunities for quality time emerge from quantity time: The more time you spend together, the better chance you have of sharing quality experiences. Eating meals together, talking about the events of the day, sharing joys and defeats, doing household chores together and spending some evenings popping corn and watching movies are examples of shared activities. Some families even schedule one evening every week for special family activities. Doing things a child or spouse wants to do also sends a strong message of love.

How much time?

Healthy families keep a good balance between ‘too much’ and ‘not enough’ time together. They spend enough time to satisfy all family members. Children learn to bring balance to their lives when they see their parents setting aside time for what they value.

Where should you start if you’re not spending enough time with your children?

A family meal is a good place to start. ‘A family that dines together stays together’ may be a time-worn phrase, but bears repeating. Having a meal with your children away from distractions such as the TV, video games and cell phones can help start those conversations that you would like to, or need to have with your children.

Ways to Spend Quality Time with Children

The most precious gift that parents can give their children is time. A personal investment in children is much more important to them than any toy, video game or electronic gadget. Some wonderful and creative ways for parents to get together with their children for quality time can be as follows:

1. Help with the homework and school projects

It is the ‘done thing’ today to hire tutors and helpers to help children with the homework and school projects, because parents are simply too busy to be able to spare time for this. However, in some of the most closely bonded families, helping the children with homework and projects is an important part of the quality time that parents give to their children. Says Tanuj Agarwal, a high profile employee in a multinational corporation and father of a 16 year old son and 14 year old daughter, “I always make it a point to take out time over the weekends to catch up with my children’s studies and help them with their weekly projects. I really cherish this time we spend together, and so do the children. My wife prepares a favourite meal and we all connect over food, jokes and the children’s projects.”

 

2. Tell them a story

When children are young, stories are one of the best ways of forging mental and emotional connects. They fire the child’s imagination, have great scope for role playing and make-believe, and are an excellent avenue for transmitting values and a sense of connectedness and cultural identity to the children.  They also open the doors to broader horizons and forge abiding bonds between the parents and children.

3. Plan an outdoor activity/ picnic or a vacation

During the spring and autumn breaks, when the weather is pleasant, it is the ideal time to plan outdoor activities in parks and at popular picnic spots. These could be as simple as playing badminton or cycling in the neighbourhood parks, or more ambitious, such as get-togethers of extended families in gardens open to the public, visits to popular monuments or cultural centres, with a packed fun meal thrown in to enhance a sense of adventure and break the monotony. There is also no dearth of family vacation venues where families can spend time together doing fun activities and connecting with each other.

4. Turn off the TV and spend the evening together

It is frightening how important the television has become in some families. Sitting together and watching TV is entertaining, and sometimes educational, but it doesn’t foster quality together time and interaction. Explore the interests of the entire family for what to do when you turn off the TV and focus on your family. It can be a good idea to set aside at least one night each week for the family and only the family, when you do something that you enjoy. It could be a story night one week f or the younger children, or guessing games/ hobbies for teenagers one week, or even cooking a favourite dish together with mom sometime, or creating a garden or a terrace garden together.

Ultimately, say experts, it is the quality time that you give your children that will figure in their memories of you, and shape their perceptions of happiness and success in their own lives and families.

Value-addition

Respect, kindness, honesty, courage, perseverance, self-discipline, compassion, generosity, dependability—most parents wish to instill such values in their children, since these will protect them from potentially negative societal influences and lay the foundation for them to become good human beings. But are the high pressure lifestyles of today, with their fragmented families, locational fluidity, cultural uprootedness, and outsourced parenting taking a toll on the value systems that our children are growing up with?

Old Mrs. Bakshi’s plants are her pride and joy. About a month ago, a friend and I came across the shocking sight of nine-year-old Anshul uprooting Mrs. Bakshi’s newly planted seedlings, ignoring the old lady as she pleaded with him to stop. About to step in and bodily pluck the spoilt brat away from the poor lady’s precious plants, we saw his mother, standing nearby, watching her son’s wanton behaviour with adoring eyes. When asked why she didn’t stop her son, her reply stunned us into silence.

“Why are you making such a fuss? They’re just a few silly plants. Why should I stop my son having fun? Aren’t children more important than a few weeds?”

Seven year old Kushagra’s highly educated grandfather—an Engineer from one of the country’s topmost universities—forbade his mother to teach him table manners and basic courtesies like saying ‘please’, ‘thank you’ or ‘sorry’, because “he’s a BOY. Let him grow into a MAN, not some sissy girl who has to mind her manners and say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’!” The same grandfather sees nothing amiss if his darling grandson lies, cheats at tests, refuses to listen to anyone and throws tantrums at the drop of a hat. One shudders to think what kind of an adult he will grow into, moulded as he is by such destructive influences.

While it is a fact that sons are generally more indulged in this respect, there are growing instances of girls becoming spoilt brats too. Twelve year old Vidhi, from a family of educated professionals, trying out dresses at a boutique, carelessly throws the discarded ones on the dusty floor. When the shop assistant remonstrates with her, she coolly tells her to shut up. Her mother, a high ranking Government official, observes this indifferently.

There always were a certain percentage of ‘Anshuls’, ‘Kushagras’ and ‘Vidhis’ in our society, but their numbers and proportions seem to be burgeoning at alarming rates now. Kids kicking, biting, hitting and screaming in a bid to get their own way—over an ice cream, a new dress, permission to go somewhere—are growing exponentially, as are destructive, aggressive teenagers.

In fact, nowadays the minority of well-behaved, non-aggressive and sensible children are often labelled ‘supressed’ or ‘abnormal’.

 

How far are parents to blame?

Often, spoilt children are excused by parents or family members with, “They are just kids. They will grow out of it”. And you do see a number of spoilt brats growing out of it. Manish Bhatia, a terror on wheels as a child, whose exploits relatives and family friends still shudder to remember, is a hard-working, disciplined and responsible young professional in a Delhi-based financial company today, who knows how to balance work and fun in life. Another such example is twenty-three year old interior designer Akshita Ruia.

Outsourced: Both youngsters are offsprings of double income families who ended up spoilt simply because they were ‘outsourced’ kids, brought up by servants or in ‘day boarding’, with parents who were unable to give them much time and tended to overcompensate by catering to all their demands and being slack on discipline and values. Lack of monitoring of television and internet use in our media-happy world is yet another source of potential self-destruction for such kids. However, both of them were fortunate enough to find good peer groups, which enabled them to absorb life-forming values. However, all ‘outsourced’ kids are not so fortunate—there are plenty who end up completely confused in life!

Besotted: And then, there are kids who are brats because they are brought up to the creed of self-gratification to the exclusion of all else. These are usually unfortunate children whose parents and family members are besotted with them and can see no wrong in anything they do. Say social analysts, such parents and guardians have no idea how badly they are damaging their children with their blind adulation and total absence of any kind of value transmission. It is usually such children who end up as entitled, obnoxious adults—an abomination for their fellow human beings and an anathema for society. The growing trend towards violence, road rage, molestations, and even crime is, to a significant extent, an outcome of such heedless, value-less upbringing.

Smothered: Yet another type of parenting known to yield disastrous outcomes is that of ‘smothering parents’—the ones who will just not let their children be and often literally push them into rebellion, in the form of falling standards of schoolwork and objectionable behaviour. Shaista Wadhwa, a thirteen year old student in my language workshops was a puzzle. Her consistently poor performance in school tests and her brilliant mind and excellent performance with me simply did not match. A heart-to-heart talk with her mother revealed an over-anxious and smothering woman. Constantly under the pressure of her mother’s expectations and anxiety, Shaista found it impossible to perform. The objectionable and rebellious behaviour was simply a by-product of her inner turmoil. By contrast, the free and easy ‘it’s ok to make mistakes’ atmosphere in my workshops brought out her talent and calibre to the fullest.

Over the years there have been numberless ‘Shaistas’ in my workshops. I usually try to show their parents the source of the problem. Those who have understood, the way Shaista’s mother did, and managed to modify their interaction with their children, have seen them blossom, while those who have refused to see this have usually ended up either crushing their children or turning them into brats.

 

Instilling Values

It goes without saying that most parents would like to instill values like respect, kindness, honesty, courage, perseverance, self-discipline, compassion, generosity and dependability in their children—yes, even most of the besotted ones would somehow like their children to acquire these values without having to do anything about it. However, the hard fact is that teaching values takes time —and hands-on engagement!

Says Dr. Gary Hill, Ph.D., Director of Clinical Services at The Family Institute at Northwestern University, “You need to make time to be with your kids and make the time you have with them really count. Talk with them about what’s right and wrong, and what constitutes good behavior and what doesn’t.

Have these kinds of conversations with your kids on a regular basis so that the topic of values becomes a completely ‘normal’ one in your household. That way, in the future, if your children do face moral conundrums, they’re going to be more comfortable broaching the subject with you than with their peers.”

Practical measures

Psychologists and social analysts suggest various practical measures to give good values to children.

• Practice what you preach

The first thing to remember is that children will never ‘do what you say’—they will always ‘do what you do’. They learn from seeing how you treat them, overhearing your interactions with others and observing what you do in different situations throughout the day. It is simply no use teaching them honesty, integrity, perseverance and responsibility if they see the elders around them behaving differently. So, set a good example.

• Apologize when you make mistakes

A lot of teenage turmoil and rebellious behaviour is due to the fact that children expect their parents to be perfect and are disillusioned when they fall from their pedestal. If you make them see from an early age that parents are human too, much of this friction can be avoided. In this context it is important not only to acknowledge your own shortcomings, but also to apologize to your children for your mistakes. This shows them that you value and respect their thoughts, perspectives and feelings. And by doing this you are also modeling respect towards others, and accepting responsibility for your mistakes.

 

• Guide through everyday events

There is nothing that makes a child run away quicker than a planned ‘preaching’ or ‘lecture’ session. However, everyday conversations are an excellent way to weave in important life lessons. There is something almost every day that can be used as an opportunity to teach your children about values—an incident in the news, something you or your children do or observe someone else doing. These can make great on-the-spot lessons.

 

• Share personal experiences

We all have experiences in our lives that taught us valuable lessons. Share some of those stories with your children, especially ones where you made choices that upheld good values. In fact, even sharing stories where you made bad choices and had to learn some lessons the hard way are a good idea to get certain messages across. This is especially effective with older children, who may be facing similar dilemmas at the moment and might learn from your experiences.

 

• Hold them accountable for mistakes

One of the biggest blunders we tend to make as parents is trying to make things easy for our children, especially when they make mistakes. A neighbour’s broken window, a complaint note from school, a poor score in an exam—all children go through these. Our job as responsible parents is not to go and smooth things over, but to make them face the music—chores at home to pay for the broken window; a promise to the teacher not to repeat the offence; confiscation of certain privileges if bad scores persist despite promises of improvement—are just some ways that children can be made to take responsibility for their mistakes.

• No easy way out of challenges

One of the most effective ways of teaching children consistency and perseverance is to not let them give up anything halfway. This is especially important in our times, with increasing instances of children demanding privileges, such as expensive coaching in academics or sports, gym programs, dance and music classes, etc. which they give up halfway, when it gets tedious and the glamour wears off. We need to make it clear to them at the outset that once they start something, they will have to see it through to its completion, or pay a pre-decided penalty. This will encourage them to take decisions carefully, take responsibility for their decisions, and to persevere.

• Involve them in helping others

Encourage your children to help others whenever they can. This could be through simple acts of thoughtfulness such as making a get-well card for a sick friend, befriending a shy new kid at school, and helping a neighbor or elders at home. This is great training for traits like generosity, kindness, compassion and respect, as well as good experience in how satisfying it is to help others.

• Good reading versus TV and Internet

This is easier said than done in this age of audio-visual media and with the markets flooded with easy-to-read trashy books. This is where childhood training comes in. Studies show that children who have been read to or told stories as kids are much more likely to break out of bad reading and viewing habits and adopt good, character-building tastes.

• Applaud good behavior

It is human nature to crave approval, especially from parents. Children are especially vulnerable in this area. A child who receives applause for good behaviour and achievements from its parents is very unlikely to go wrong. Psychologists say that most misbehaviour is nothing more than a plea for attention.

“You need to use the time you have with your kids very wisely,” urges Dr. Hill. “Make sure you build time into your schedule for consistent, quality, face time with your kids—while they’re still kids.”

Article published in ‘Responsible Parenting’ magazine on 19th November 2013

reblogged from Being a Parent

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