Daddy, Daddy, Can You Play With Me?
"Daddy, Daddy, can you play with me?" This sentence comes up every now and then from my two wonderful children, age 7 and 5.
Both
my children were born premature. I remembered when I first laid my eyes
on my children; they seemed no bigger than the size of a kitten. Even
though they looked so small and fragile, I considered them the most
beautiful and dearest ones in my heart. They had to be placed in the
incubator in the first few weeks of their life. And every day after
work, both my wife and I would travel down to the hospital to look at
them and ensure that they were OK. Even though as tired as we are from
our daily affairs, the joy of seeing them made our daily travelling back
and forth seemed so minute. After all, what will it cost to raise our
kids?
Before having children, I have heard many stories from my
friends and colleagues that parenting is not easy at all. The commitment
to take care of children, attend to their needs, ensure that they have
what they need to grow physically, mentally and emotionally seemed to be
challenging tasks for many parents. Because of all these concerns, many
have also shield away from having children since it seems to take so
much to bring up a child in the modern and stressful world.
Even
though we knew of the responsibilities, my wife and I decided that it is
a choice that we want to make - to have a family that is not just the
two of us. We wanted to learn not to just to build our lives around
ourselves and our careers, but to be able to invest our lives in our
family. While we are as busy as many working couple, we had to ensure
that we spent quality time as a couple to ensure that our relationship
continue to be grow in our marriage. This also becomes a greater
priority when our children are born, so that we do not sacrifice our
couple time in the midst of taking care of our children.
From then
onwards, we never regret our choices and we considered the choice to be
the best we have made. Personally, the experience of raising my
children is simply a wonderful one. From the moment I laid my eyes on
them, and to see them growing progressively stronger over the months and
years - I consider myself privileged to be part of all these moments.
Imagine I was able to see them start their first crawl, walk the first
step, and calling me "daddy". Sometimes, even when I am just watching
them engaging in their own play and learning activities, the joy I felt
is already tremendous. I would sometimes reflect and say "Just see how
much my children have growth!" At times when they invite me to join in
their play activities, I could also felt an increasing establishment of
my parent-child bond with them.
As I watch them grow, one of the
priorities that I will not compromise is to spend quality time with them
no matter how busy or tired I am. I would also deliberately arrange
one-to-one personal time with each child, so that I can ensure a
personal bonding time based on the uniqueness of each of them. I will
never imagine that having children is a chore or burden. In fact, my
wife and I thank God every day in our life for choosing us to parent our
children. The whole perspective of us chosen by God to parent our
little ones simply changes the notion of us "being" no choice that they
are our kids and we just have to bring them up no matter what cost us.
From them, we learned what the true meaning of patience and love are
about. In actual fact, the children helped me and my wife to develop an
even deeper relationship with each other through the process of looking
at each other's strength, and helping with each other's weaknesses. As
with any couple, both my wife and I have our unique strengths and
weaknesses. During the process of parenting, rather than focusing on
each other's weaknesses, we learn to share expectations of our roles and
responsibilities and best see how we can use our strengths in our
family. In areas that each of us are weak in, we learn not to blame each
other, but to best see how we can help one another to grow and
contribute to the family. Therefore, communication is an important part
in our marriage, as we learn to converse deeper about our children and
our parenting skills.
Whether you are at the first few years of
the child's life, or already in the teenage years of the child - I will
never say it is too late to develop a bond with your child. After all,
what is there to lose? The time and our effort that we can put in as
parents is nothing compared to what we can stand to gain - a
well-adjusted child and the establishment of a strong bond with them.
While all of us want to do the job of parenting correctly from day one,
most of us learnt from our mistakes we made along the way and grow in
our knowledge and skills of good parenting skills. I believe we can all
learn to recover lost ground with an enduring patience and an
earnestness to set things right. So "Daddy, Daddy, can you play with
me?" my immediate response? Let's Play.
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