Why are you acting this way?
As a parent, I have asked myself this question more than once. Unsurprisingly, I would ask it as I tried to figure out my child’s behavior. Now I ask it as I try to figure out my own behavior.
There are moments, especially after a long day at work, where I come home and ask the question, “How was your day?” to my husband. Before he can finish his third sentence, the interruptions from an excited eight year old begin.
Like my husband, she needs attention, too. Unlike my husband, she hasn’t found the balance yet of how to appropriately show when her needs aren’t being met.
She longs for undivided playtime with mom or dad. More often than not, she gets undivided playtime with the dogs or cat. She has learned over the years that when she acts out, she gets attention.
While it isn’t the attention she is hoping for, she gets true undivided attention.
Psalm 90:12 reads, “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”
As a full time working parent, it’s hard to balance everything. I feel like I spend quality time with my child. But do I really?
Recently I did a time study. During the school year, my typical routine looks like this.
- 5 a.m. to 6 a.m.
Personal time to journal, exercise, or Bible study. - 6 a.m. to 6:30 a.m.
Get ready for work and prepare breakfast and lunches - 6:30 a.m. to 7:15 a.m.
Wake kiddo and get her ready for school - 7:15 a.m. to 7:30 a.m.
Take kiddo to school (sing, talk, and read stories in the car line) - 7:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Typical work day (including commute time) - 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Dinner, dishes, homework (if not done yet) - 7:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Showers, bedtime routines - 7:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Family game and bedtime stories
(On tired nights, movies with no interaction … many times with additional work phone calls or answering TXTs)
On perfect days, my child gets a total of 45 minutes of my time … none of which is really spent playing in her imaginary world with toys. That’s the one desire of her heart. So she settles for singing in the car on the days I take her to school, story time before bed, and whatever other time I can squeeze out of a day where I have given everything else to everyone else.
I have pondered this a lot since telling her I was changing careers and taking a part-time opportunity that meant I would be home more.
“That means you’ll get to take me to school every day,” she said, her smile beaming as though she had just won the lottery.
It meant so much more. I would be home earlier every night, and we would have more playtime in the morning. I would have Fridays off. Nights and weekends would belong to our family again and not community events.
It wasn’t until I took time to really reflect, that I realized, to my daughter, our most precious time together was the 15 minutes of undivided attention she gets with mommy on her ride to school. On the days I don’t take her, I steal that gift from her.
From the day she was born until she turns 18, God gives me 9,460,800 minutes to be her mom. To date, I have already spent more than 4,204,800 of those minutes. In my daughter’s unknowing eyes, 15 minutes a day are all I give her for undivided mommy time.
Time goes by fast. It is impossible to make more of it.
Psalm 127:3 reads, “Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him.”
You get one chance to truly enjoy that reward. If you haven’t recently done a time study to figure out the time you’re spending with them verses the rest of the world, I encourage you to do one.
“Why are you acting this way?” may be a question more about self-reflection of your behavior than your child’s behavior.