Christmas is over and in retrospect I’d like to share the greatest gift idea of the year.
This year my favorite gift was one I gave to one of my children, a nearly seven year old girl, who incidentally has been having a period of neediness towards me. I guess the biggest disadvantage to being part of a large modern family is the fact that we’re often too busy to spend quality time together with each other – one on one. When it comes to things however we have everything we need, and more. The gift in question was therefore a Dream-Day where she and I spend one complete day together, just the two of us, during which we go shopping for clothes for her, go to a coffee-shop, visit the library, go to the movies and top it off with dinner in a nice restaurant. Perhaps in smaller families this kind of thing is plain, ordinary, everyday happenings, but this is certainly not the case in a large family, like ours.
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After a good night’s sleep we took off from the crowded house, leaving the rest of the family to spend the day in misery, missing us terribly (just kidding, they were perfectly fine). After taking the bus to the city center (a small adventure in itself), buying her a dress, two skirts, three pants, a cosy jumpsuit, new shoes and a hairboe (she really did need some new clothes), borrowing three books for her at the library, watching the latest Narnia movie, and having a dinner of cheeseburger for her and baked potato for me, she happily exclaimed that this was the best day of her life. Even though this remark gave me a twinge of guilt (how deprived is she?) I felt grateful and contented that evening sinking into the sofa, watching her do a happy dance for her family while wearing one of her brand new outfits. In this case it is doubly true that giving can be more rewarding than receiving… |
Oh how wonderful! you know, it really is the quality time and not the quantity time that is important. There is only 4 years age gap between my 3 sons and so like you, one on one time was not something that happened very often. Its not just the kids that miss out, I think we do as well. My sons are now all grown men with their own busy lives and I really wish I had invested more time in scheduling one to one stuff rather than just doing it maybe once a year with each of them. I hope you keep at it.
By the way – I loved your slideshow on flicker. you have a beautiful family and home Nicone.
Thank you so much, Juliana!
I’m sure you’re right that not only the kids are missing out when we allow ourselves to be too busy to spend one-on-one time together. Suddenly it is too late to do anything about it. I hope I’ll manage to keep at it as well – I certainly intend to!
Have a great week!