I felt in love with the article featured below. As I read through it, I mentally recalled my best childhood memory (am sure you will do same as you read *big smile*)
R. V. Brown was the sixteenth of 17 children. As he and his siblings arrived at the dinner table, he never understood why his mother stood in the corner with a bowed head. When he was older, he learned that she was praying that the butter beans and cornbread would make it to one end of the table and back without running out! Of all the rich memories forged in his childhood home, this was the best: dinnertime. Everybody gathered around. Talking, listening and enjoying the laughter and noise of family togetherness. He can still hear the older kids talking about the work they’d been doing that day. Or about what had happened at school. Another might tell a story he remembered from his stint in the army. And before they finished, R.V.’s daddy, who couldn’t read or write, would lean back in his chair and begin sharing from his heart in that soft, arresting voice of his. Wisdom nuggets on how to treat people. Pearls on how to always give your best, settling little problems by using some patience and understanding and not hurting anybody.
I hate to think what the pace of life in today’s families has done to memories like these. How many kids, when they grow up and on reminiscing on their childhood, will reflect on how much it meant for them?
Here is another experience –
My mom always speaks of a childhood memory she is fond of. Whenever her dad returned from a trip, he would carry and tightly hug each of her eight siblings, after which he would give each of them a bath, eat with them and then tell them stories. She has spoken endlessly of these experiences that I begun to feel that it’s a normal requirement for a “dad” to do on his return from a trip
As the hours passes each day and twenty four hours seems so short, I have determined to give my children good and worthy memories of their childhood. These will build an emotional reservoir of warmth, love and acceptance from which they will draw from at the various stages of their lives. These memories will also act as benchmarks of encouragement and motivation, instruction, strength, and comfort along the paths of life. I know they will keep them close to their hearts and refer to them when the going gets tough.
It is for reasons, like the ones mentioned above that we all need more than a little effort to give our children happy memories. Especially in an era, where playing in the sand where the act of socializing and interacting were learnt has been replaced with cartoons, video games and sophisticated toys. Bedtime stories where moral values were learnt have been replaced with television. Family rituals like breakfast, lunch or dinner time where the day’s blessings or challenges experienced by the child were shared have been replaced with fast food and home deliveries. Family prayer time where the child is taught the art of taking “everything” to God has ceased.
Despite this constraint, the onus lie on every parent to build a generation that will value RELATIONSHIP over ACTIVITY. We cannot give our children what we do not have. Our primary assignment as parent is to be caretakers.
Let’s make our children’s childhood full of remarkable and life-empowering memories that will form the bedrock for a purposeful and successful future.
Let’s give our children memorable experiences!
Image Credits -http://krock.com.au/b-h/51350-dazzle
2 Comments
Emediong
July 17, 2012 at 6:19 pmExcellent piece!
Olaedo
July 17, 2012 at 4:48 amI'm making great memories everyday with and for my children. It's my responsibility as a gate-keeper and it's importance cannot be over-emphasized.
It's wonderful to be able to give them something the world would never be able to steal, especially since that something would give them lots of courage to face the world.
Thanks for sharing, dear.