| | | | How Much Interacting with Our Children is Too Much? |
By Seth Mullins 
Special outings - like fishing and shopping trips, hikes and camping excursions - can remain etched in our young ones’ fondest memories forever. Children feel appreciated and looked after when their parents and guardians make time for them in these and other ways. Non-custodial fathers, in particular, tend to try and compensate for their time away from their kids by making bonding a top priority. They might endeavor to make every occasion that their children are with them a special event.
We can be overzealous in our pursuit of the perfect bonding experience, however. This can be especially true when we engage a lot in types of play that are age-appropriate for our kids but not for us. It is crucial that children learn to differentiate between their experience and that of an adult. We don’t want them to perceive us (their parents) as merely grown-up versions of them. If we interact too much on children’s level of play, we run the risk of becoming more of a peer rather than an authority over them.
As parents, we have to experiment a little before we can decide what healthy distance we can maintain without denying our kids our warmth and emotional involvement. There’s a fine line between holding to our dignity as adults and just being generally uptight, and our intent is not to push them away or deny them contact with us. We aren’t trying to remove our very presence from their lives, but only to limit our input in their play-acting. We want our children to grasp the idea that, in certain ways, their world and ours are separate. They can be happy exploring their own fantasies in play – either alone or with others of their general age group. Our gradual withdrawal from them, as they grow older, doesn’t have to spell an end to the fun.
When children of similar ages play together, they tend to find their own rhythm between stimulating activity and quieter downtime. We witness them running around outside for a while, then coming in for a drink before sequestering themselves in a room to build with legos. When we parents become actively involved in the proceedings, they might push themselves harder in order to keep up with us. Though we’re wont to remark that we wish we still had the energy that they do, the truth is that we typically expend more of it in certain ways. Our days are longer and our tasks require a higher degree of concentration. Our rhythm and that of our young ones is not always complementary, therefore.
Setting aside time to play and bond with our kids is invaluable, and it does much to nurture their growing minds and emotional bodies. We do them a disservice, however, when we pose as their buddies instead of their parents. Children who see us as peers are likely to experience insecurities instead of feeling like they exist within safe bounds. They need to believe that we are authorities; that because we are older and wiser, we know what is appropriate for them better than they know it themselves.
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