A New Village  

In the fast paced, high stress, electronic world we live in today,we often forget to take the time to let our children know how much we love them and what they mean to us. As parents, we make many sacrifices to feed, clothe, and educate our children. We brag about them to our friends or anyone who will listen. So often others know how much we love and care for our children. However sometimes our children fail to get the message, and they need to know they are loved. So frequently loving our children is about conveying that to them in a manner that they hear and understand it. As parents it is our responsibility to find ways to show our children that no matter what we love them. When we meet our children's basic need for love, we lay the foundation for meeting their other needs.

One of the best ways to convey our love to our children is by maintaining meaningful and genuine contact with them. A way to maintain contact is to spend time with them, whether it is 15 minutes per day or an hour per day. More important than how much time is the quality of the time. It is more important to listen and be present, responding to their needs for 15 minutes than to spend an hour in their present working or doing something else as equally distracting.  Just like we make commitments to keep the passion alive in our marriages or with our significant other, we must do the same with our children.

Play is one way of maintaining contact with our children. When we play with our children we are helping them learn abou the world around them, increasing their creativity, and helping them become better problems solvers. In addition, for parents, when we play with our children we often feel less sttressed, and more connected as a family. With small children, throw a ball, have a scavenger hunt in your backyard, have water gun battles, have a tickle-fest. With adolescents play a videogame, play cards or a board game, cook together or exercise together.