Daddy, Daddy, can you play with me?
“Dad, Dad, can you play with me?” This phrase comes up from time to time from my two wonderful children, ages 7 and 5.
My two children were born premature. I remembered the first time I laid eyes on my children; they didn’t seem bigger than the size of a kitten. Although they seemed so small and fragile, I considered them the most beautiful and dear to my heart. They had to be placed in the incubator in the first weeks of life. And every day after work, both my wife and I would go to the hospital to see them and make sure they were okay. Even though we are tired of our daily affairs, the joy of seeing them made our daily commute seem so tiny. After all, how much will it cost to raise our children?
Before having children, I have heard many stories from my friends and colleagues that parenting is not easy at all. The commitment to caring for children, attending to their needs, making sure 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 turned away from having children, as it seems like it takes a lot to raise a child in the modern and stressful world.
Although we knew about the responsibilities, my wife and I decided that it is a choice we want to make: to have a family that is not just the two of us. We wanted to learn not only to build our lives around ourselves and our careers, but also to be able to invest our lives in our family. While we are as busy as many working couples, we had to make sure we spend quality time as a couple to ensure that our relationship continues to grow in our marriage. This also becomes a higher priority when our children are born, so that we do not sacrifice our couple time in the midst of caring for our children.
From then on, we never regret our choices and consider the choice to be the best we have ever made. Personally, the experience of raising my children is simply wonderful. From the moment I set my eyes on them, and see them progressively strengthen over the months and years, I consider myself privileged to be a part of all these moments. Imagine that I could see them start their first crawl, walk the first step, and call me “daddy.” Sometimes even when I just watch them participate in their own games and learning activities, the joy I felt is already tremendous. Sometimes he would reflect and say, “Look how much my children grow!” At times when they invite me to participate in their play activities, I can also feel a growing establishment of my parent-child bond with them.
As I watch them grow, one of the priorities that I will not compromise is spending quality time with them, no matter how busy or tired I am. I would also deliberately organize individual 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 a burden. In fact, my wife and I thank God every day of our lives for choosing us to be parents to our children. The whole perspective of us chosen by God to be parents of our little ones simply changes the notion that “we are” without choice, that they are our children and that we have to raise them no matter what it costs us. From them we learned what the true meaning of patience and love is. In fact, the children helped me and my wife develop an even deeper relationship with each other through the process of looking at each other’s strengths and helping each other with each other’s weaknesses. As with any couple, both my wife and I have our unique strengths and weaknesses. During the parenting process, instead of focusing on the weaknesses of others, we learn to share the expectations of our roles and responsibilities and see better how we can use our strengths in our family. In areas where we are all weak, we learn not to blame each other, but to better see how we can help each other to grow and contribute to the family. Therefore, communication is an important part of our marriage as we learn to converse more deeply about our children and our parenting skills.
Whether you are in the early years of your child’s life or already in your child’s adolescence, I will never say that it is too late to bond with your child. After all, what is there to lose? The time and effort that we can put in as parents is nothing compared to what we can earn: a well-adjusted child and the establishment of a strong bond with them. While we all want to do the job of parenting right from day one, most of us learn from the mistakes we made along the way and grow in our knowledge and skills to be good parents. I believe that we can all learn to make up lost ground with lasting patience and seriousness in fixing things. So “Dad, Dad, can you play with me?” my immediate response? Let’s play.
“When you look at your life, the greatest happiness is family happiness.”
~ Joyce Brothers