The last week I have been picking up one of the little guys I nanny for at school and we have been staying to play at the school playground for awhile.
It has been seriously eye opening for me, so this post isn’t meant to be judgmental in any way.  I think I am able to get a different perspective as a non-parent at this school, I really don’t know many of these parents and they tend to sit and chat with each other or at least sit near each other and I’m the outsider.
I think we all, at times, have fallen into the trap that is having our children playing while we are checking out Facebook, ordering from Amazon, seeing if we got any new emails, chatted w friends, etc.  I’ve done it, especially back when my boys were younger and the three of them would go play and not seem to care if I was there or not.  Honestly, with a playground full of kids they don’t really want to play with their mom!  I’m good with that, but here is an observation I have made.  Every single day, as I sit alone at the school playground and watch the kids play, there have been times where parents were completely oblivious to what their child was up to.  Yesterday it was two moms talking about how overbooked they are, not really complaining but saying with pride how every single day they have activities after school (except every other Friday).  As if that meant shot their child up the social ladder!  While they were talking, one of their children was close to jumping off the top of the monkey bars and another was swearing at the other kids on the playground.  They were literally less then 20 feet away from the moms.  Next to them was a mom so consumed with her smart phone, that her daughter (who was maybe 10 feet away) had to call to her 12 times to get her attention and show her that she could skip 3 rungs on the monkey bars.  She had literally been hanging there, arms fully outstretched for a couple of minutes calling for her mom.  The day before it was a dad who was busy on his phone and his young son had just scored a long goal on the soccer field and the game came to a halt for a minute while he tried to tell him the news but he never looked up.
For me, this is sad.  I’ve been that mom and my kids have been those kids.  What am I going to do about it?  Make a change.  Nothing is more important than my kids.  Nothing.  There is no Facebook post, email or recipe that can’t wait.  I will still do a quick peek or answer a text, but for the most part I am making a promise to my kids that my attention is on them (even if I’m not hovering over their every move or directly playing with them).  I’m not aiming to create self centered kids, but ones who accomplish things on their own and don’t have to yell for me 12 times to give them a thumbs up.