Too busy for a ‘Thumbs Up?’
My 5-year-old son attends swimming lessons each and every Sunday. It’s a busy pool with multiple classes going on at once.
During lessons parents sit around the pool and watch their offspring splash around, offering words of encouragement, the occasional ‘thumbs up’ and many smiles of pride.
You can picture it can’t you? It was pretty much the same as when we learnt to swim… way back when.
However if you’ve actually taken a child to swimming lessons recently you’d know that the picture I’ve painted is actually a fake.
In my experience, parents aren’t offering words of encouragement, thumbs up or even smiles. They’re staring at a screen reading banal Facebook updates, answering ‘important’ emails that simply couldn’t wait until Monday or just surfing mindlessly.
I wonder why?
Have we really convinced ourselves that we are that busy that we can’t devote 30mins of our attention to our kids? Heck even 15mins would be good!
How many of these parents have to lie when their kids ask them, “Did you see me?”
How many of these kids finish a lap to look for a thumbs up, only to find their parents’ thumbs otherwise engaged?
I know this might seem like a trivial matter, but I wonder if it’s just the tip of a much larger iceberg?
I’d be interested to hear what you think… am I worrying about nothing?
Author: Dan Haesler is a teacher, consultant and speaker at the Mental Health & Wellbeing of Young People seminars. His website is: http://danhaesler.com/ and he tweets at @danhaesler
Hi Dan, yes I agree in all aspects of life not just at the pool! I think we need to pay our kids some real attention & be role models so that they can learn to pay attention to others rather than what is becoming the norm – ‘on their phones, giving their friends virtual thumbs up whilst sitting next to each other’ ..
It’s not a trivial matter, and it is the tip of a huge iceberg. Loving a child involves attentiveness to him or her. And loving a child involves enabling them to love in turn eg by returning their look and by speaking to them. Thank you for writing this.
Completely agree. A smile, a thumbs up and really just paying attention, I think with kids goes a much longer way then we realize. I have deep concerns for our future. My question is now should we say something to those parents if we too are there and have a child in the same swimming class? This post is good but if people don’t do something with it now then really what was the point; just to arouse thought?
How right you are!
And its not just at swimming lessons. Our children need our encouragement and attention. It should come as no surprise then to these ‘busy’ parents when their kids are too busy to listen to them and their advice.
And we wonder why society is heading in the direction it is?
Building a relationship takes time & effort. We shouldn’t expect a strong relationship with our adult children if we are “absent” for their childhood.