When my daughter was born, a senior colleague, Andrew gave me some sage advice, “Take lot of pictures! Blink! She will be 18 and fly the nest!”.
That moment is etched in my memory – we were at a café in Wroclaw city centre, and the waitress just recovered from me asking milk with my tea! I may as well have asked milk with my single malt!
Andrew explained that when his kids were growing up, he was travelling for work a lot and working a lot when at home – he delegated the home work support to his wife, excused from family dinners and absconded from school performances. He now has the time for the kids, but the kids are busy charting their own – he wasn’t complaining but the sentiment was evident. “He didn’t need to have been so working so much. . . he could have been more available, more present, more in-the-moment, when his kids were growing up.”
Reflecting on the message the following few weeks, I resolved that I will be more deliberate with my time with my daughter.
Resolving is one thing, reality is another thing.
I learned that kids have an unlimited capacity to absorb your time – only limited by how much time we can give and how much energy we can manage. (“One more story and I will sleep!”)
I learned that when you coach them on how to deal with their day-to-day playground challenges, we learn more about ourselves (How to tell your best friend that you no longer want to play princess games?)
I learned that I don’t need to have all the answers, we can be curious together and solve the puzzle together. (Is God real?)
I learned that she has questions that I can’t fathom in all my lifetime (Why is tomato a fruit rather than a vegetable?)
Every summer, there is a reminder on social media about ‘18 summers’ – that we have only 18 summers with our kids. True we might be the centre of their universe for the first 18 years. But if we did the first 18 years as well as we could, I believe, we will be in their universe for light years to come.
See you next week. Do good work!
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