WHEN THE VILLAGE ROCKS THE CRADLE

WHEN THE VILLAGE ROCKS THE CRADLE- Part 6

 

QUALITY TIME VERSUS QUANTITY TIME

 

A man jumped to his death from a seven story building, stunning several people who were down on the street.  Policemen were summoned and they questioned the man who was in the room with him when he jumped.  His explanation was that the man saw a cloud just a few feet from the ledge and sais, "I think I can jump out onto that cloud."  So he tried it.  The policeman asked the man, "Why didn't you stop him?"  The man answered, "I thought he could make it."

 

This is just a bizarre funny story, but if they were not so sad, the stories I hear about families spending little time with their children and calling it "quality time" remind me of this little story.  In believing this, they are just "jumping out on a cloud"   hoping for good results. There is no solid substance there to hold their argument. Quality time is quantity time.

 

I have no argument with them at all that spending time together at the zoo or going on a picnic or sitting with them and reading them as story is quality time.  But if this is after hours and hours of being away from them, is it enough?  What good is quality water if there are only a few drops?  This terms was coined, I am persuaded, by a guilty mother or father who felt the need to justify their neglect.

 

Some studies have been made to try to determine if day care is harming our children. Such studies do not tell us much because they are usually biased, and even if not, the findings are sometimes found to be erroneous later. The issue of whether and to what extent children are harmed may be a story waiting to be written in individual lives. How sad that it may be too late for many of our children. Personally, I think the jury is back in and given the verdict and some have just not accepted it. Children have to live with their mothers for many years...they surely need to be attached to them to feel secure in their relationship.

It would be a good thing if all the parents in our nation would simplify their lives and give quality time to their children.  One of my favorite quotes is from Benjamin Franklin:  "It is the eyes of other people that ruin us.  If all buy myself were blind, I would want neither a fine house nor fine furniture."

 

This quote from Benjamin Franklin makes us see that when we put material things ahead of our little ones (even though it is for THEM)  that we are sacrificing the precious for the trivial.  How sad!