I'm not your entertainment

In days of old parents spent so little time with children, especially dads, that children often grew up not knowing their parents or having spent any quality time with them. Turns out this had detrimental affects on children who felt unloved and neglected and often had poor relationships with their parents as adults. Only to continue the cycle - think Cat's In The Cradle.

These days we've got more pressure to be super parents, perfect at everything. We have to spend just the right amount of time with our children or else we're failing as parents and the time we're expected to spend with our children seems to be a fair whack each day.

I'm all for doing something fun with my children. At the same time it's not my job, or yours, to entertain them or be their friend. By friend I mean someone they hang out with an awful lot.

Children need to learn to entertain themselves. They need to learn to appreciate and enjoy their own company. Not doing so also has detrimental affects on them well into adulthood. Think of adults you know who can't be alone... ever. They need to have others around and if they have moments of solitude they have to fill that space with distractions because they're bored with themselves.

Quite often, and more so these days, we'll hear children walking around saying I'm bored and looking to their parents for entertainment. Play with me. Give me something exciting to do because I have no idea how to entertain myself. It's terrible and getting worse the more children dabble in electronic entertainment. Watch what happens when you take the electronic device away! A child dies inside because electronic devices entertain them and they don't learn, through those devices, how to entertain themselves.

Get your children to play outside - there is something to be said for the humble mud pie, have them spend time in their rooms playing with all those toys you've given them, have them read books, draw or make things. Get them to cook or do a chore even. Anything that gets their minds thinking and forces them to spend time with themselves getting to know themselves and what things they like and are good at.

They won't always have someone around and is it so important they learn to like who they are and understand they're awesome and talented people. If you, or electronic devices, do all their entertainment for them they won't learn to imagine and fantasise and day dream. They won't learn the joy of free play and creativity.

So while there is a fine balance not to neglect your children this new (crazy) idea of being a super parent who spends infinite time with your children is absurd. At best 30 mins a day is all you need to give of yourself, with extended periods over the weekends (such as taking them to a park to kick a footy around).