When You Should Be Home for Your Kids

I attended a parenting talk at my daughter's school sometime ago and the speaker talked about the two most important times that you should be at home for your kids. These two times are: when your kids come home from school and before they go to bed.

Does that mean you can disappear for the rest of the time, provided that you are at home during these two times? Far from it. Kids need their parents to watch them and to guide them. Of course, we can't be around all the time (or we'd go bonkers and our kids too!) but if it is truly necessary to be away and with good reason, then trying to be at home at these two times can help you bond with your kids and will make them feel that Mommy and Daddy are around.

Being at home when they come from school will be difficult for people in the corporate world, in regular 8 to 5 or 9 to 6 jobs. Having tried both worlds -- that of being a corporate person and a stay-at-home mom, I can say that it is true. When your kids come home from school and they know that you are there, they will seek you out right away. They will be so happy to see you. They haven't entered the room fully yet and they are already sharing stories about what happened at school. You don't get to experience that when you are elsewhere.

Being at home when they sleep necessitates coming home early from your business or from your work so that you can tuck them into bed. I like bedtime. The kids are tired and will quiet down for a good or interesting story or book. When they have slept, if you wish, you can go back to work on your computer but do you really need to bring home work? Everyone needs some work-life balance.

In a perfect world, we would have all the time to spend with our kids and bond with them. In a world such as ours though, we strive to spend more time with our kids, hoping that even as we work to provide for them materially, they will never get the feeling that we were always away.