Guest post by Marcus Herzberg The Night Clerk's WisdomA Gentle Warning“Kiss ‘em and hug for as long as you can.” As I was chewing the fat with the night clerk at the community college where I taught, I mentioned that my wife and I were expecting our first child. Having children of his own, he’d shared some stories and the advice above. “They grow up so fast,” he added wistfully. I didn’t take the man to mean merely that we should rub cheeks with infants. I thought he meant that we should show our children affection in many ways during our limited time with them. In my twelve-plus years as a father, now with two sons, his words have floated back into my thoughts many times. With reflection and experience, I now see the night clerk’s gentle warning as sage advice about the importance of parental affection. How Do We Show Affection?Let me explain what I do and do not mean by affection. Showing affection to children doesn’t mean babying them, or giving them everything they want, or treating them like they’re the center of the universe. We don’t show affection by making life easy for our children or fixing all of their problems for them. Having children do chores or clean up their own messes has nothing to do with affection and everything to do with responsibility. Similarly, making your kids get off their screens and play outside for a couple of hours is an act of caring, not cruelty. The type of affection that I advocate is any way in which we genuinely convey our love for our children. This can take many forms. To use the night clerk’s examples, these include physical displays, which too often fall out of our interactions as our children age. But there’s no reason that they have to disappear, and an impromptu hug, “just because,” can carry a powerful message to an adolescent who feels increasingly alone, confused, or misunderstood. Verbally conveying affection to children in both conventional and unconventional ways, is also important. Many parents make it a habit of telling their children they love them before they leave the house or go to bed. But using these same words instead of taking a harsh tone to address a child’s mistake can help convey connection and combat alienation. Similarly, telling them, “I’m worried about you,” to preface an uncomfortable conversation about a problem behavior can remind our children that our care and concern for them is our driving motivation. We can also show affection less directly, for example by making the time to do something with or for children that they really enjoy. Maybe that’s playing catch or going fishing or making their favorite dinner or dessert. And sometimes, affection is best conveyed by just listening when our children have something that they’re trying to say, regardless of how busy we are or how important it seems at the time. Losing that Loving FeelingThere are a variety of reasons that expressions of parental affection wane as children age. In terms of physical and verbal expressions, some have the attitude that it’s not “proper” once kids get past the “cute” stage. It’s as if some unwritten rules of etiquette suddenly kick in after they lose a couple of teeth, requiring fewer hugs and I-love-yous. Now it’s certainly true that many children become less affectionate as they get older, but I think it’s a two-way street. And sometimes, I think the kids are just reflecting parental attitudes, including fear of emotional vulnerability. Then there’s the fear that any display of physical affection to a child, from a parent or others, can be a slippery slope toward sexual abuse. If you doubt that this mindset exists, it’s not hard to find internet forums, comment boards, etc. where everything from accepting an awkward kiss from a two-year-old niece or nephew to high school sex education is labelled as “grooming.” As a career educator, I understand the reality of child sexual abuse, but there is a broad line between familial affection and this sort of evil. Vigilance on this issue is helpful. Paranoia is not. Yet another reason for the waning of parental affection is the belief we need to “toughen up” kids for life as an adult. Kids today are “soft,” so the thinking goes, and we don’t want to raise a generation of wimps. A couple of observations are worth making here. First, in a prospering society, every generation will have lives that are relatively easier than the previous ones. The house that my father grew up in had no indoor plumbing, and at one point during the Great Depression, his family’s usable income dwindled to a dime. I’m surrounded by smart appliances that I can monitor with my phone, from which I order a five-dollar latte that I pick up on my way into work. I imagine my ancestors who walked across deserts and toiled in coal mines hanging their heads in shame. However, despite these changes in wealth and convenience, each generation has challenges (e.g., recessions, wars, pandemics) that make life difficult. And despite generational advantages, many people of all eras experience poverty, job loss, broken relationships, and the death of loved ones. In short, life is hard for many people at various times, but it’s difficult to see how parental affection would make any of this worse. What percentage of people who have overdosed on opioids in the past decade, or are currently in prison were shown too much love by their parents? Secondly, kids are “soft” today for many of the same reasons that adults are soft: we have technology and a demand economy that has intensified the emphasis on immediate, ephemeral gratification. Most of us are required to do very little that makes us uncomfortable for very long. Moreover, we are herded by algorithms to seek out superficial digital interactions and virtual spaces that too often narrow our experiences and perspectives rather than challenge them. However, this softness comes with a hard edge: we’re becoming more isolated and disconnected, and so are our children. Couple that with the fact that social media influencing, corporate marketing, and cyber-bullying have added to the challenges of adolescence that fray family bonds. Yet I’m still failing to see how more parental affection would negatively impact this dynamic. Affection is not the enemy of strength, or resilience, or the critical thinking that will be required to deal with the problems of tomorrow. Our ChallengeDespite the busyness of our daily lives and all of the accompanying distractions, we need to continue to look for opportunities to show our children affection in genuine ways. When my nine-year-old comes down the stairs with a cheery “good morning,” an un-caffeinated grunt from me is not an appropriate reply. When he interrupts my grading to tell me a detailed story that I’m really not that interested in, I need to listen without looking impatient. Continuing to show affection for our kids makes their lives better, and ours as well. My twelve-year-old routinely thanks his mother and I for making him dinner . . . unsolicited. The other day, when I picked him up from an outing with his friends, he hugged me . . . in front of them . . . in the middle of a busy store. You’d better believe I hugged him back. Just because they grow up fast, doesn’t mean you have to let go.
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AuthorArielle Haughee is the owner and founder of Orange Blossom Publishing. Categories
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