We Need to Interact With our Kids

I love fall for one reason and one reason only, the weather. I love the cooler days and the colder nights. What I don't like about fall is that it signifies the end of the baseball season. I am really more of a spring kind of guy if you didn't already guess. Fall does bring beautiful colors but before too long those beautiful colors land in our yard and then the work begins. Depending on the landscape and which way the wind is blowing you may get the opportunity to rake leaves on a daily basis for quite a while.

Well, the other day my son and I were out raking leaves in our yard. I had asked him if he wanted to help but never really assigned him a job. He was just kind of out there playing while I was raking the leaves into piles. I set aside a pile of leaves that he could play in while I raked up several other piles throughout the yard. Every time I looked back at my piles of leaves I realized that some of the piles were no longer in piles, but scattered about. Each time I would look back there would be another pile displaced. It wasn't at all windy so I could rule that out. The next thought I had was "Where was my son"? I found him playing in the carport riding his tricycle. Without putting much thought into it I decided to re-rake the piles and then watch for a minute just to make sure the wind, which was nonexistent, wasn't somehow affecting the piles. So I raked and then waited. Soon I saw the cause of the agitated piles. Once my son realized that there was another huge pile of leaves he just couldn't resist himself. He would race his tricycle as fast as he could until he crashed into the pile sending leaves flying all over the yard. I was tempted to yell and remind him that I left a pile for him to play in. Then I remembered I had asked him to help but wasn't letting him. So instead of helping like he had wanted to, he found his own fun, which was creating a lot more work for me. The next day I had more leaves to rake but this time I was prepared. I would rake the leaves into piles then put them in our trash bin. My son then had the assignment of being the "leaf smasher". I would put him in the bin and let him jump on those leaves and smash them down so we had more room for leaves. He knew that if he messed up the piles that I had already raked then he would have to wait longer before he could smash them down because I would have to rake them again. We had a great time working and playing together and I look forward to doing it again.

Too often we have "Things to do" and don't take the time to interact with our children. How many times do our kids ask us "Can I help you mommy/daddy"? They ask us just about as many times as we say "In a minute". These minutes often turn into many more and sometimes we never let them help us at all. They get tired of waiting and go find something else to do. When this happens we have once again missed another opportunity to interact with our children. When our children get older they may not come to us if they are used to being rejected. They will probably go to someone who will listen. We can only hope that whoever is listening is also giving good advice. Or, we can take the time to interact with our kids and make ourselves approachable. We are all busy, but we should never be too busy to interact with our children. Payback may come around when we are older and need help and they tell us that they are too busy.