Satisfying a child’s insatiable need for attention is a full time job.

At Home With The Kids
By Michael Wittig

My boy is standing beside me as I write, pulling on my finger. He wants me to come with him. Ignoring him is not possible, and hasn’t been for over a year since he learned that by merely pulling on my finger he can make me rise from my chair and follow him to almost any location in the house.

He’s been training me to follow him like this for over a year. At first, he would simply hold my finger and slowly wrinkle up his face in an increasingly unpleasant expression. Then began the whimpering noises. When he started actively tugging fingers he noted a better response, and incorporated that behavior into the routine.

A few months ago he started using words. Now, in addition to the finger pulling, he issues short commands to motivate me towards the tasks he has in mind. Actually, he’s quite polite with his commandments, often punctuating his wants with a heartfelt “Pweese!”

How is a father to resist?

I am extraordinarily grateful to have two small children in my care at this stage of my life. I have a grown daughter who is getting married this summer, a daughter I did not spend a great deal of time with while she grew up. I feel bad about that fact from time to time, both for the lessons I could have taught and for the experience I missed out on.

But I had another chance. Even better, when my second round of fatherhood began I was given the opportunity to devote full time to the care of my two younger children. The decision to stay home with my kids is one of the best choices I ever made.

I know that many parents do not have a choice when it comes to holding a job and raising a family: they must balance both to keep the bills paid. Unfortunately, in pursuing both job and family, family life is usually what suffers.

The problem is that working parents miss out on the life of their children. In truth, most of what transpires on any given day is rather mundane and hardly noteworthy. But there are golden moments mixed in with the commonplace, times when a child first displays a new talent or uses new words. These moments occur at random, and a parent who misses the moment misses out.

Children have an insatiable need for attention, whether they are capable of asking for it or not. Kids who don’t get the attention they seek are commonly more fussy and frustrated. In some cases, they turn to destructive behaviors to take out their frustrations, setting the stage for harsh words and hurt feelings.

In other cases they turn to their peers. Depending on the group of kids and the level of adult supervision, peer interaction can be a good thing or it can be a bad thing. When parents are absent from the scene, they have no way of monitoring what their children are experiencing, and are often taken aback when a child reveals a newly acquired bad habit.

Some young children have additional needs: my daughter, for instance, thrives on an elevated level of interaction to combat and counteract her autism, and my boy needs lots of verbal interplay to compensate for a language delay. For the past three years we’ve had regular visits from specialists, visits that would have been problematic if I had to schedule them around job responsibilities.

My children would probably have been far worse off if both my wife and I worked. While my son and daughter both receive special assistance, the value of that assistance comes more from the follow-through. By staying at home and directing my attention to the needs of my children, I can provide the follow-through.

My boy is tugging at my finger again, saying “Daddy, up pweese!” I am thrilled to hear the words, even though I am not finished working. I try explaining to him why I can’t leave my task, just as I’ve tried many times before, but he doesn’t understand, not yet.

Finally, I turn to him and say, “Okay, what are we going to do now?” We both walk away, smiling.