Children spell love TIME

Time, the most precious gift

Written by: Yolandi Singleton (Supervisor: Assessments and Therapy Unit)

Dated: 13 April 2017

 

We often think and say that time is our biggest enemy. It must be that life has become so busy with lots of happenings around us that we then feel bombarded with many things on our plates.

Technology and the development thereof also plays a huge role in this as people are regularly busy to make sure they keep up with the latest trends to feel that they are not missing out on the world and what it has to offer.

Time is continuously reminding us of things that happened in the past, the present and what might happen in the future. We know that the past is not something we can reverse, even though we often want to. The future is out of our hands now, but what we do in the here and now will ultimately impact the future. Therefore it is important to focus on the here and now.

When we conduct therapy with traumatised children our strategy is to take them into a time of fantasy while exploring their life events and feelings and simultaneously keep them in the here and now. We attempt to offer them an opportunity and some time to find healing within themselves, but we also know they cannot achieve this healing process without the love and support from their caregivers and overall support system.

We often cry inside when we assess children, discovering that they feel lonely due to the adults in their lives not making time to spend quality time with them. Mia Kellmer Pringle (2013) explains in her book “The needs of children”, the 5 emotional needs of children which is relevant in all contexts when working and living with children. This author unpacks, amongst other needs, the need for love (we will discuss the other emotional needs in the blogs to come). It is a need that is met by infants from birth onwards and is something they depend on, on a daily basis from their parents. When this need is not met, children seek alternative ways to receive love, which could lead to unwanted situations.

When we say that a child is in need of love, it means that parents should spend quality time with their children in their life world. As adults we assume that children will enjoy certain activities we prepared for them and when they do not engage we think they are ungrateful. No, that is not the case, we need to think differently about this. Everyone has different interests and activities they experience as fun and enjoyable. Parents can therefore ask their children what they would like to do that is fun for them. That is really when children experience that their parents spend quality time with them in their world. When we conduct assessments with children we often find children saying that their parents do not play anything with them. However when we seek information from the parents afterwards, the parents are surprised by this statement, saying that they often do a specific activity together. When we then ask the parents who initiated the activity, the parents are eager to say it was them. We then encourage them to rather ask the child what they would like to do for fun and explain that children perceive this as love.

Let us embrace this special time around Easter and the long weekends to come to spend quality time with our children, who loves us unconditionally. Let us switch off our phones and other technology devices that keeps us so busy and steal the joy we could experience with the innocent gestures and laughter from our children.