The day I forgot my phone and remembered my child

Me and my 3 year old son have a little routine we have fallen into on a Tuesday morning. We have nowhere particular to be, and I try not to plan any “jobs” in, meaning that he can more or less choose what we do after we drop his sister to school. We meander through the village, visiting all his favourite places: the ducks, the banana shop, the charity shop, the library, the park when the weather is good enough, all at his pace. It can feel excruciatingly slow, and my husband laughs that it takes us 3 hours to walk home, but I really believe there is a value in children sometimes having a bit control over what happens in their life, when so much is decided for them, and when I can switch into the right mind-set, I really enjoy not rushing and being busy, as it’s such a rarity.

Last week was similar but at the same time completely different.

We called into a shop to buy a birthday card, and he noticed that this shop also had a café at the back, where we had never been. He asked to stop for a cup of tea (along with a cake and a cup of milk for him, of course), and with nowhere to be I thought why not? We sat down, made our choices and that was when I realised I had FORGOTTEN.MY.PHONE! OH NO!

Once I got over the initial twitchiness of “what if someone wants to get hold of me / I miss an email / what if something earth shattering happens on Facebook / in the news????”, I then had the most lovely morning. We sat and talked in the café while he was playing, as much as 3 yr. olds chat, I watched what he was doing, we read some books together in the library, and he pretty much had my full attention for the morning. And do you know what – he was a much nicer child to be with! Anyone who knows him knows he is a pretty livewire and prone to get up to all sorts of mischief and devilment, and I’m likely to lose him somewhere on the school run most days.

Now I’m not constantly glued to my phone, but it does come out when my children appear to be engaged in something and I get a second to myself to check it, and I was surprised how many times I reached for it that morning (and how little I had missed when we got home). And I got to thinking - what if just because my children seem to be busy doing something doesn’t mean they no longer need me to be involved in it? And what if some of the most challenging behaviour is being heightened by them feeling less important than my phone – the classic attention-seeking behaviour being reduced by, shock horror, attention!

I’d like to say I’ve entirely changed the way I use my phone and have cut down my usage hugely, but I haven’t. What I have done is purposely put it down and focussed on my children at specific times where I can, such as after school, or when we have the luxury of some 1 on 1 time, or in the morning at breakfast or at dinner. And it turns out I like them much more as people when I focus on them more. Not that I ever don’t love them, but there are times when even the best behaved children make you want to tear your hair out or cry or shout!

Perhaps when you have a child behaving in a way you don’t like, it’s not their behaviour that needs the focus, but yours. And perhaps if you expect your children to give you their full attention when you are speaking to them, you should do the same for them……….? No-one is a perfect parent, and nor should we strive to be as that way madness lies, but this feels like a small change we can all make that just might make a big difference.