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Re-valu-ing
the Family, Part Nineteen: A New Kind of Time Management
by
Richard and Linda Eyre
(www.valuesparenting.com)
Note: In this
twenty-six part column, Richard and Linda Eyre explore the recent
revolution of the family from the honored centerpiece of society
to a disrespected and seemingly redundant appendage to the larger
corporate and cultural institutions of our new world. Re-valu-ing
the family, the Eyres believe, is the only alternative to America's
demise. The sequence of the column is: A. Re-valu-ing the family
(part I); B. The "crux" (parts 2 and 3 -- why family is the foundation
for everything, including happiness); C. The "curse" (parts 4 and
5 -- the social problems that plague our society today); D. The
"crisis" (parts 6 and 7 -- the breakdown and breakup of families
that allows and leads to the social problems); E. The "cause" (parts
8, 9, 10, 11 -- the reasons our families are failing); F. The "culprits"
(parts 12, 13, 14, and 15-- how our new, large institutions are
destroying the small, most basic institution of family); G. The
"cure" (parts 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 and 22 -- what you as a parent
can do about it); H. The "case" (parts 23, 24, and 25 -- a case
for government and big corporations to pay more positive attention),
and I. Finding or forming a family support group (part 26).
In
this installment, we continue our seven part "cure" (see the end
of installment 16 for the seven-part list) with some thoughts on
a new kind of time management.
3. Reinvent
TIME-MANAGEMENT with Family Emphasis
It's ironic
that as we've pushed a goal- and priority-setting time-management
to nearly an art-form, few of us have figured out how to make it
produce any more time for our highest priority -- our families.
We come up with lots of "solutions" (which are really excuses) like
"quality time" or pagers or availability on our cell phones. But
real quality time usually happens when there is an adequate, unrushed
quantity of time. And our kids don't just need to know
how to reach us when there is an emergency, they need us to be there
to focus on them when there is no need other than the need for time
together.
I remember
as a young parent feeling absolutely swamped with responsibilities
and opportunities at work, getting home after the kids were in bed
and leaving the next morning before they were awake. I felt especially
guilty about not spending more time with my five-year-old son who
seemed to really need a dad. Whenever he wanted something I'd be
gone or about to leave.
I thought,
in those days, that time-management was the answer or the solution
to just about everything; so I simply thumbed ahead a few days in
my day timer until I saw a free evening next Thursday and I blocked
it off for Josh. Almost immediately I felt a little less guilty.
It was down in the book! So I really wasn't neglecting him! But
when Thursday came there was a minor crisis at the office and I
knew I'd have to stay late. But no problem, I'd just pencil Josh
in for a week from Tuesday. Since I'd wanted to surprise him, I
hadn't mentioned anything to him yet, anyway. So he wouldn't know
the difference. Quality time was scheduled again, so I was once
again off the hook in my own mind.
When Tuesday
came I actually left work a few minutes early and showed up at the
house right on schedule (my schedule). Josh was sitting
in front of the TV when I burst in. "Come on son, let's go do something
fun together!" He looked up at me (probably trying to remember who
I was) and said, "Not now Dad. I've got to watch the 'Incredible
Hulk.'"
What a mistake
we make when we think we can program our kids or have them want
to be with us, right when it's convenient, or schedule them like
a business meeting. Kids need us when they need us, and quality
time comes not when we dictate but when circumstances provide us
with a teaching moment -- when we're spontaneous enough to answer
a question or play a game or tuck a child into bed even when it's
not convenient or written down in our day timer. This kind
of occasional "serendipity" is a hallmark of good parents and it
demonstrates to kids that they really are the first priority.
This is not
to say we can't schedule some family time. Indeed, doing so may
be the most important solution of all. But it needs to be scheduled
with the kids so they can anticipate it and plan on it
and start enjoying it even before it happens.
The problem
with most time management is that it focuses on achievements
at the expense of relationships, on work goals more than
on family goals, and often on things more than
on people. Most of us need to make two adjustments in our
time management if it is to work for our families rather than against
them. First, we need to adopt a serendipity attitude that allows
us -- even prompts us -- to see unexpected, unplanned opportunities
to do fun and beneficial things with our children. Second, we need
to do all we can to block certain times when we can be together
as families.
It used to
be that families ate dinner together most nights, and the dinner
hour and the dinner table became the time and the place where things
were discussed and feelings were shared. The busyness and conflicting
schedules of today make that ideal virtually impossible for most
families. But, as a minimum, families with children living
at home should set aside one or two regular, set times each week
when they will be together. For many families, Sunday lunch or dinner
is the best time for a family meeting setting. The next week's needs
and schedule can be reviewed, parents can ask about anything from
grades to friends, and kids can ask about anything from rules to
finances. Family mission statements can be developed. It's a time
to share feelings and to feel the teamwork and identity of family.
In addition
to the weekly family meeting (on Sunday or whenever), families ought
to try to set one weekday evening aside as a family night where
they do something fun together -- something as simple as a movie
or a visit to the pizza house or the ice cream store. It may not
be possible to do this every week (or to hold the family
meeting every Sunday), but if times are set aside and if only real
emergencies or things beyond our control cancel them . . . they
will begin to have a bonding, unifying effect on our families. Whether
a family consists of two people or ten, holding certain times of
the week for just each other can make a huge difference.
We had
been holding Sunday family meetings for years -- as consistently
as our schedules would allow. But we still didn't feel like everyone
was having their say or that all were equally involved. Then we
heard an idea from another family and began trying it in ours: Once
a month, on the first Sunday of each month, after a Sunday
lunch together, we began holding what we called a "family testimony
meeting." Each family member had a chance to stand up for a few
moments and talk about (or "testify" of) his or her feelings
(about other members of the family, about school or work, about
themselves -- their worries, their joys, etc. -- each could just
say whatever he or she wanted, with everyone else listening and
paying attention. The only instruction we gave was that they should
center on feelings and use the words "I feel" as often
as possible.
The first
couple of times were a little slow -- one child was too anxious
to express himself, another didn't want to say a word. But we persevered,
Linda and I talking about our feelings (especially for the children)
and then encouraging them to do so. It has now become the absolute
highlight of our month. There, in the quiet of our living room,
with phones off the hook, we take time to tell each other how we
feel. The love level and the trust level have expanded dramatically.
We know each other better, appreciate each other more, and love
each other more completely than we otherwise would
Find your own
formula. Look for the times of the week that are most possible and
most predictable for you. But prioritize them and make them happen.
Real quality time will come gradually, and according to your willingness
to set time aside and to be flexible and spontaneous when relationship
opportunities come up.
4. Practice
(and teach kids) the SELECTIVE USE of larger institutions.
It may sound
like a stretched or overdramatized analogy, but we need to think
of (and teach our kids to perceive of) big institutions as similar
to fire. Fire can warm, support, and sustain us, or it
can consume and destroy us. Media and merchandising, business and
banks, Internet and information are the same -- they can serve us
or consume us. It's a lesson our parents and grand parents didn't
need to teach us. It's a lesson we do need to teach our
children and grand children.
They need to
learn to perceive the world like our target diagram . . . the family
as the essence and the core . . . drawing on the outer sectors for
support but never giving up their identity to them, never letting
them replace or supplant family loyalty, never letting them take
advantage of or swallow up the family.
Public Sector
Private Sector
Community/Voluntary Sector
Family
Children are
capable, once they are seven or eight, of understanding this perspective
-- and can be taught to identify the larger institutions and know
what each does to help us and what each does to hurt us. A parent
can use a large version of the bull's eye diagram and help a child
fill in the big institutions that fit within each sector and list
the good and bad effect that each can have on the family. Such a
chart can serve as a "framework of warning" on what to avoid (from
"too easy" credit to too expensive tastes, from media amorality
to Internet pornography, from all-consuming employment to all-consuming
recreation). If your children are older, share with them the charts
on pgs. ___ to ___ and help them to understand the ten different
types of large institutions that they should use selectively
(accepting the good, rejecting the bad).
Essentially,
the goal is to help our kids become good critics who can
see through advertising and promotion, who recognize instant gratification
for what it is, who connect action to consequences whether others
do or not, and most of all who perceive the dangers stemming from
the expansion instincts (and the greed) of larger institutions.
Our own experience convinces that kids can, gradually over time,
become good critics who see things as they really are.
We'd been
trying for months to help our kids see the world in the framework
of the bull's eye diagram and to be self-motivated critics of the
materialism and amorality that lurks everywhere today. We had little
indications that we were getting somewhere when a child would say,
"Yeah, sure." while watching a commercial on T.V. or would ask their
friends if they knew how much a car really cost when you bought
it on credit. We knew one of our boys had really mastered at least
a part of it when he told us he'd found an Internet server he thought
we should shift to because "it screens out all the garbage." But
we really felt we were making progress when we were driving our
seventh-grade daughter home from a parent-teacher conference and
she suddenly said, "You know, I've just got to go in and talk to
my math teacher and tell him why I didn't think that test was fair.
After all, he works for us!" We asked her what she meant and she
really told us. "Well, we pay him, don't we? I mean, it's our taxes
-- he works for us. We own the schools. They don't own us. It's
like you've been telling me -- schools and stores and companies
and stuff, even movies and music and the Internet, they shouldn't
be telling us what to do. We should be telling them what to do!"
Well, we
had to have a little discussion about the right and wrong ways to
"tell them what to do," but we were delighted with her growing ability
to think things through for herself and her capacity to be a critic
rather than a pawn-like acceptor of everything.
The bottom
line (and one that kids can understand and feel empowered
by) is this: Live by your own values. Sift and screen the things
media and schools and advertisements throw at you. Learn to recognize
when a big institution's self-interests don't match up with your
values, your beliefs, your sense of what's best for you and for
your family.
Next week: The
fourth phase of the cure . . . the selective and careful use of
larger institutions.
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© 2001 Meridian
Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
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