Every father wants to be involved in their children’s lives and spend as much time with them as possible. But not every father is privileged to have a lot of time on their hands due to the demands of work. As a result, every opportunity that busy fathers have to be with their children are like precious gems, and ought to be treated as such.
Busy fathers naturally would feel guilty for not be able to spend more time with their children. They would be glad to know that it is the quality of their involvement that matters, not just the quantity. This is not to say that quantity is not important. Fathers ought to spend time with their children when they can. But if a father is prevented from doing so, his child can still benefit from the warm, stimulating, and positive contact with him. A child who has access to his father learns about life and living by interacting with him. Here’s an example of it.
Parminder Singh was Twitter’s managing director for India, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East when his son was just five years old. Parminder would tell him bedtime stories about a made-up character—a mischievous boy called Puggi—to his son every night. This daily ritual slowed down to every other day, until it settled into a weekend routine. By the time the stories stopped his son was turning 13 and Parminder had clocked well over a thousand stories. In a letter to his son, Parminder confessed that “Puggi was just an excuse, a front, a living version of a few values that I hold true.” In it, he also reiterated the lessons he wanted to teach his son through the stories about Puggi.
You might not be a prolific storyteller like Parminder Singh, but you can be creative in your own way. Think of what your child would enjoy and work around that.
By Parcsen Loke, Family Life Coach, Centre for Fathering. If you wish to contact Parcsen, please make an appointment at: calendly.com/iamparcsen.