Laptop Battery There is plenty in life that is beyond our control. Regardless of our past, however, we have an opportunity to create happy memories in the present that we can draw on in the future. How sad, when a boy, age twelve at the time, whose father had died quite suddenly took six months of therapy to be able to come up with two happy memories of his father, once he took him fishing and once he took him to a baseball game. All of the rest of his memories were of his father coming home drunk and verbally abusing him. What is it that we want to leave behind in memories for our children? You can’t change the past, but you can create happy memories in the present that will sustain you and your children in the future.
When a family member dies, one of the important tasks of grief work is to preserve happy memories. These memories serve as a positive link to the deceased loved family member and helps to sustain the timeless attachment to our loved ones even though they are physically no longer with us. What if there are no happy memories preserve? What are the shared memories that you and I are creating with the people in our life we cherish the most? Is there anything more important? Is there anything more timeless? Those sustaining memories will outlast by far any material acquisitions that we may work overtime to obtain so that our kids have "the latest and best gizmo."
As we rush from project to project trying to raise our families and keep our heads above water, it is easy to forget that the most valuable thing we can give our kids is time, our attention and ourselves. To be fully present with them in this very moment, which as Jon Kabat-Zin reminds us, is the only time that is truly ours for certain. It doesn't mean we have to take them to the mall or to a ballgame, it may simply involve joining them down on the floor as our young child plays. It may simply require that we join them in their world as fully as we can in this very moment. To suspend our own notions of what the child should be doing, to refrain from directing the child in any way, but simply to join with the child around what he or she is doing, what he or she is interested in at that moment. Parents will be surprised how powerful this moment of fully joining with the child in his or her world can be. They will also be surprised to discover how difficult it is for us to do.
It will be tempting to redirect the child, correct or question the child, instead of trying to put our selves in their space and fully appreciating what they are interested in at that very moment. When our oldest daughter was a baby, I was fascinated with her complete indifference to all the toys available to her in deference to a brightly colored cotton ball box that completely captured her attention and gave her immense pleasure to gaze at it and grab it. The joy that infants and young children can take in the simplest pleasures provides an important lesson to us all. Sometime more is less. If we substitute material goodies for the giving of ourselves, not only will more be less but also we will have deprived our families as well as ourselves of those potentially happy memories that we failed to create. They and we will sorely miss those absent happy shared memories when we seek warmth and comfort in the "harsh winters" of our lives.
Catalogue: Home & Family | Parenting
Title: Creating Happy Memories By: David A. Crenshaw, Ph.D.
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