Parents Should Ignore Their Children More Often

Since children are less developed intellectually, we sometimes give them only a portion of our attention, believing that will satisfy their needs. We read a few paragraphs about the Middle East in a news magazine and then look up to say, “Oh, you’re building a castle. That’s nice.” Then we jump back around the globe. The divided mind becomes a mode

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Children, in particular, have suffered a grievous decline in just the goods that are most important to them: adult time, energy, and company. The child-rearing work that men and women and an extended family did a hundred years ago, and that women did thirty years ago, has to be done somehow by someone. The scientific moral is not that we need exper

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TO MY MIND, THOUGH, there is a third development that has altered our parenting experience above all others, and that is the wholesale transformation of the child’s role, both in the home and in society. Since the end of World War II, childhood has been completely redefined. Today, we work hard to shield children from life’s hardships. But througho... See more

the more instrumental care is, the less relational it becomes; the less we really listen to our kids and enjoy the process of letting them unfold with, yes, some intervention from us, but a much looser and less frequent grip on the reins.

“Finally, are most of my moments with my child spent asking her to “do things?” Or am I taking out some time to be alone with her—just to “be together”?”