What is love? One dictionary definition: “…an intense feeling of deep affection, a great interest and pleasure in something, a person or thing that one loves.” Lots of synonyms from besottedness to a score of zero in tennis.
I have been pondering about the meaning of love and different kinds of love. Parental love. Filial love. Romantic love. Geriatric love. “Love thy neighbor as thyself” love. There is so much hatred in the world today maybe all of us should be thinking about love, the antonym of hate. It can’t hurt and it might help!
Years ago I wrote about the three essential Parenting Vitamin A’s namely Affection, Acceptance, and Attention. Affection comes easy to new parents —it’s a hormone thing. The minute a parent holds a newborn he or she is hooked.
Acceptance is a bit trickier. It means acknowledging that every baby comes into the world a unique individual with his or her own personality and temperament. These traits are inborn and lifelong.
Attention is the most interesting and challenging parental vitamin A because it takes time and nobody has more than 24 hours a day.
We once used the phrase “quality time” but that term was never quite defined. In a short story “Quality Time,” author Barbara Kingsolver wrote “Parenting is something that happens mostly while you are thinking about something else.”
She is absolutely right. But children need two kinds of time with their parents (and grandparents). I call these “Focused Time” and “Present but Not Interacting Time.” The latter does actually comprise most of the time we spend with our children.
Focused Time is when Mom or Dad is doing nothing else so that all of the parent’s attention is focused on the child. You and the child are close enough to make eye contact. You are attentive to your child and can read the child’s cues. You are doing what the child likes to do at the child’s pace and stage of development. Sometimes this is instructive time when you show the child how to do something.
Present but Not Interacting Time is also important to both child and parent. You are home but you’re doing your own thing. Mom or Dad may be cooking or on the computer or weeding the garden. Available but not paying full attention.
Another example: You are seasoning and stirring the spaghetti sauce while your child plays on the floor. You talk to each other occasionally but you are focusing on the sauce. Your child looks so adorable you put the sauce on low and drop to the floor to ask about the Lego edifice. Or your child looks up and asks you, “Mommy, how do we get to be born?” You take the sauce off the stove and swiftly shift gears to focused time. Your child is saying I need a lesson from you, right now.
Every child needs some Focused Time with each parent every day. But no parent can provide this level of intense interaction all day long.
It is both impossible and counterproductive to pay attention all the time. It is not good for the child as it could delay developmental tasks like learning to self-soothe and play alone. Hovering helicopter parents make lots of continuous noise, like the flying ones do, but even noisy kids need some silence and solitude.
Every sibling is an individual (even twins) This can be a logistical problem when both parents work but I know from experience parents can make it work so each child gets separate and focused attention. I used a timer if my two were squabbling about the other getting preferential treatment.
In today’s world, take gender into account by ignoring it. At one time girls were taught to cook and boys to change tires. Nowadays both boys and girls need both skills. This is actually healthy for both dads and daughters as dads used to wonder how to play or interact with a little girl.
A stern word of warning: Focused parental attention means no cell phone within reach. All cell phones and screens silenced. Now you can make eye contact with your child’s beautiful eyes. Focus on those and not an incoming text.
What about couples? Does each one need to dispense these Vitamin A’s? Absolutely. Affection and Acceptance are essential and present or there would no longer be a couple. But attention is paramount. Actually I have come to understand that love is attention. We grownups need attention too.
Couples spend lots of present-but-not-focused time together. The older we get the more precious such time is: doing mundane domestic tasks together, separately glued to one’s own computer on adjoining desks, in the car listening to NPR.
However, focused attention is also important. Just as parents have to switch gears, so do we. Attention means looking and listening. It means asking for attention if need be. Not by sulking or glowering or arguing but simply and civilly asking.
One couple I knew solved differences of opinion by each assigning a truthful numerical value to, say, the movie to go to that night. A very wise woman I know would say “Ouch!” every time something her spouse said touched her anger muscle. She told me it was the best way to alert her husband and prevent an impending fight. She paid attention to her own needs by giving her husband a way to pay attention to her needs. Much more loving than using the old door slam to get his attention. Resolution is a beautiful word. Repeated spats means each of you needs to pay attention to both the one you love and your own needs.
What about neighbors, strangers, friends, those we know hold different views than we do? Manners and civility is a kind of love we can call “polite attention.” Let all of us assume that each person we encounter deserves this form of love. The encounter may prove us wrong but let’s at least try. Maybe love does conquer all.
