The Best Gift For Children Is Called TIME

Time, that is the name of the best gift for children. They do not sell it in toy stores or on the Internet. It is only in us, in our disposition and in being aware that a story should not be read in 2 minutes. Spending time with children does not mean leaving your mobile phone, putting your tablet or plugging in the television on your favorite channel. Neither is that education, nor affection, nor affection.

Childhood is one of the most important stages of life in which the fabric of our evolution is woven. Thus, children are immersed in thousands of changes that adults sometimes do not even perceive and that, therefore, we miss if we are not attentive.

Slow-parenting, simmering

Educating and sharing “simmering” moments means respecting their rhythms, giving them space to develop, not skipping stages, growing and evolving without the stress and demands that we have generated around them. This is the best gift.

This educational perspective is based on the slow philosophy, which manifests the need to privilege a calmer rhythm of life, thus promoting maturity, evolution and the creation of bonds from the child’s natural progression, without haste.

In this way, it is possible to support the little one in each step, not force their evolutionary stages and offer psychological oxygen to their education, forgetting the marking and impregnating each little learning, each display of affection and each collection of motives with delight.

That the rush does not steal the magic of childhood

Haste is our worst adviser. They are in charge of stealing the most precious moments and the most wonderful details of childhood magic. Now, if we stop to think, maybe we can remedy this.

Probably not. We must do the exercise of reflecting if we offer TIME to our children, if we play with them enough and if we organize their day to day by reserving moments in which we dedicate ourselves exclusively to them and ourselves in conjunction. Are we giving them the best gift?

Thus, it is important that:

• Let’s put aside the rush from the early hours of the day, let’s wake up our children with affection and offer a breakfast of love with tranquility.
• Let’s savor every meal with them without distractions like television or magazines. We can play watch-see, we can talk about everyday things and deepen the expression of feelings and emotions.
• It is good to preserve “secret moments” in which we are only going to talk about our things with total sincerity.
• We can go on excursions to quiet places, to natural landscapes and to environments that invite us to explore and experiment together.

• It is good to bathe once in a while instead of showering in a hurry.

• It is essential to let them choose, because sometimes we over-mark their day to day and boycott their wishes, expectations and decisions.
• Turn off mobile phones and all those electronic devices that, as we know, absorb our attention.
• From time to time we can throw ourselves anywhere in the house and do absolutely nothing.
• Find games that enhance their creativity, their intelligence and their ability to feel.

Let us not let the upbringing of our children be determined by the rush or bad habits that exist today. The best gift is not the command center of the fashionable cartoons or the latest Disney dolls.

Images courtesy of Karin Taylor.