Guest Author - Paula Petrie

Life has become a rat race. No matter how hard you try to prevent it from touching your family, it will. We are living in a world where a main aim of industry is producing piles of cool stuff. And a main aim of families is making the money to afford it.

But in spite of busy lives, it is important to regularly connect with kids for them to know they have an important part in your family and in this world; for them to realize you haven’t fallen into antiquity; and for them to grasp an understanding of what’s really going on around them.

Adults have it hard today but kids have it worse. They live amidst glitter and ad bombardment without the benefit of understanding history. Fledging esteem and burning desires can become tangled and irritating to the point of needing immediate relief through buying, drugs, or Mom’s calming salve.

The importance of reconnecting is obvious. The ways to reconnect are so simple that we devalue or overlook their importance. Some basic ways to reconnect are:

Take time to just sit and talk. Turn off the TV. Turn on the radio and enjoy each other’s company and the serenity.

Play sports together. Exercising by playing with your kids is one of the best and easiest ways to stay in shape and share deep connections.

Making dinners together, gives kids a chance to share the events of their day and pick up a skill or two as well.

Tucking children in at night. You can de-stress together as you rub their backs or stroke their feet and listen to what’s been on their minds.

Share your kids music and their books. Find out what excites and delights and enjoy the easy connections free for the taking.

It takes a family effort to manage an environment where the by-product of developing a comfortable middle class life, is a confusing mountain of industrial crap, and technical creations that threaten the basis of humanity.

Safe and dysfunctional is a new world motto. People are losing trust in the strength of love, and the fact that love can/will endure what they emotionally throw at it. This fact makes the importance of reconnecting vital, to build trust, to share growth, and to deepen friendships and ties. Independent living has given all people, adults and children, an umbrella of protection and disconnection.

I think whatever irate reaction, my kids, my husband, or I have to an emotion that I will always navigate toward reconnecting and mutual understanding. To be hurt does not look for revenge or choose to stay in anger. To live within a society framework of greed, gold, glitter, and gadgets, doesn’t mean we must lose our children, or ourselves, to it. To be busy doesn’t mean that we can’t stop (for a minute.)