How Can we Love Our Kids Well?
As a mom, one of our goals is to love our kids well. But sometimes we struggle with how to love them well. So how do we love our kids well? We have found that being with them is one of the most loving things we can do for them. We'll explain.
Friends! If you only recently started following us, you might be surprised to find a post that’s not a recipe. We want to let you know that we started our blog to share our heart. whether it pertains to food or to life. That is why it is called, “Weloob”. We used to share posts like this here a lot then we took a long break from that and focused only on recipes. We are back to sharing posts like this. You can expect to see this kind of posts on Mondays. And we will continue to share recipes with you every week – on Wednesdays and Fridays. The recipes on Fridays will include videos. This is our schedule because we want to bring some rhythm into our posting frequency. We will try to keep this schedule to the best of our ability but if we ever miss a day, well know that life happens. Thank you for being here and we hope our stories, whether food stories or life stories inspire you.
Okay, back to today’s post which is about the things we have learned about loving our kids well.
This kitchen is a recovering phone addict. We hate to say this but it is the truth. Putting our phone down is one of the hardest things we have to deal with. There are so many things on the phone drawing our attention. And these are oftentimes an enemy to good parenting.
“Do you really have to be on your phone now?” we can’t count the number of times our older girls have asked us this question.
They mostly ask this question when they want our full undivided attention. When we are on the phone, we are not fully present with them and they can sense that.
Being on the phone stops us from loving our kids well. Because to love our kids well, we have to be with them fully.
So how do we love our kids well? We love our kids well by being with them. One of the biggest lessons we have learned is that our kids value our presence more than anything else. They want us to be with them more than they want us to do things for for them.
Here is what being with them looks like:
1. Being with them looks like talking with them. This is huge because our girls LOVE to talk and they need someone to listen and talk back. It is hard to listen sometimes because oh the cares of this world! And sometimes their stories are unending.
But we need to listen to them talk. We need to hear their stories, their thoughts and, their questions. We need to see life from their lenses. The more we listen, the more we create a safe space for them to pour out their heart.
2. Being with them looks like playing with them. Our girls LOVE when we play with them. They want us to run around chasing them. They want us to jump in the trampoline with them. They want us to play UNO with them.
They enjoy when we play with them as though This kitchen is a kid myself.
3. Being with them looks like speaking each child’s love language. We recently learned that our kids have their individual love languages and we need to learn them and speak them. You can learn more about the five love languages here.
And here is a book on the five love languages for children.
4. Being with them looks like cooking with them. Spending time in the kitchen with our girls just cooking and talking is always such a wonderful bonding experience.
5. Being with them looks like teaching them. As a homeschooling mom, we love seeing our girls grow in their knowledge. We have found that the process of learning together (because we are always learning) yields more closeness.
6. Being with them looks like cuddling up to watch their favorite shows. Cartoons are not our thing. But we have realized that when our girls are watching a cartoon and we join them and even comment on it, it brings them so much joy.
Now note that This kitchen is a work from home mom. But always being at home does not automatically translate into always being present. Being present for our kids is something we have to do intentionally, keeping away all distractions.
Being with your children might look different to you depending on their specific love languages. We encourage you to find out how your kids receive love and commit to loving them that way.
May we be a generation of parents who are not glued to their phones but keep their phones down, look into the eyes of their kids and know them, really know them.
May we give our children the gift of presence because the gift of presence is one of the greatest gifts we will ever give them.
We are still a work in progress and maybe you are too. Let’s hold on to God as our anchor and trust Him to help us love these children, these blessings well.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart;
do not depend on your own understanding.
Seek his will in all you do,
and he will show you which path to take.” Proverbs 3:5-6 (NLT)
