Communicate Love

At my job we constantly have lost children.  Parents often walk and talk on their phones, check text messages, argue amongst themselves, etc.  Meanwhile, little Johnny drops his favorite new toy.  So of course he stops to pick it up.  As soon as he stands back up, Mommy and Daddy are gone.  So the kid wanders a few steps, then begins to cry.  Some kids may get lost simply because they "see shiny things" and walk toward the toys, video games, or something else they fancy.  In this case, it is the child's fault for walking away, BUT the child comes to the same scary situation - "where is my family??"

One of my fellow co-workers finds the little boy and begins the 3 step process to finding the "lost parents", as we call them.  First step, stay where the kid last saw the parents.  Step 2, if parents have not shown up in 15 minutes(yes it seems long, but that is the LEGAL time frame we are given) then call security.  Step 3, take the child to the Family care center/first aid to be reunited because this is where we send all of the lost children and parents.  

But children do not care about steps 1, 2, and 3.  All they care about is that mommy and daddy left them. they walked away, they did not look back.  will they ever find their parents? are they all alone?  will they be kidnapped??  some kids think about that.  most kids are traumatized by the short separation.  I have helped several lost children over the past 8 years and they are always crying and often ask me if they will be able to see their family again.  This seems to be their biggest fear. Heartbreaking right?

So this kid is bawling, scared to death, wanting nothing but to see mommy and run into her arms and and hear her say i love you, i am so sorry, and to repeat it back.

But NO.... 9 times out of 10.... all i see is a parent's worried face, quickly turning to anger and they begin yelling at their kids in front of 100s of people!  The child quickly feels unloved and humiliated in front of so many strangers.  the kid thinks subconsciously "mommy doesn't love me, she hates me because i didn't stay with her, and broke the rules."  

See kids do not understand that for that 5 minutes of separation, we, as parents, worry sick about our kids.  We are worried that the most precious thing in the world to us may have gotten hurt or kidnapped.  We begin to think of life without them, and we worry more.  we think about how much we love them and how we would not be able to go on without them.  We think about how scared and sad they must be, we want to hold them, but we cannot, because we cannot find them.  So if we feel that way, why on earth do we not tell them that? instead we start yelling at them when we see them.  its a natural reaction.  fear turns to anger pretty quickly.  But as a parent, who is responsible for the future well being of our children, we must stop this habit.

Best thing you can do is Communicate love.  why don't we tell our kids how worried we were?  tell them how we were so afraid that someone could have kidnapped them, we felt helpless that we couldn't hug them knowing that they were probably scared.  and we should always explain that we love them so much, and that is why we have rules set in place to stay together.  because life would not be the same without them.

Above all Communicate your love, no matter what.  Love is the foundation, as soon as you crack that, you will never find happiness in that relationship.  Everything else builds on top of that.  Keep love strong, and everything else will follow.  You will be amazed at how your kids will respond to this - Honesty, Respect, Family... everything is better if you always communicate love.