Am I a Disengaged Parent? 3 Steps to Fix it

I’m willing to bet that few of us try to be a disengaged or distracted parent. Life just happens. Distractions are everywhere.

Take, for example, Jesus’ story of Mary and Martha. Martha was busy and distracted but everything she was doing was in service of others.

Mary on the other hand is seemingly doing not very much at all as she simply sits with Jesus and listens to him. And yet, Jesus says, Mary has chosen the better way – and it won’t be taken away from her.

Let’s face it, parenting comes with an unending to do list. But these very tasks that we do in service of our children, can lead to distraction and disengagement from them. They can lead to us forgetting to prioritize giving our kids the things they need the most – our time and attention.

Find Perspective

The first and perhaps most important thing we can do in our parenting journey is to make sure we make regular times to take stock. Times to look at our family life and how we are spending our time with honest and fresh eyes.

For me, this is always best done in an atmosphere of prayer. Taking time out from the busyness and demands of parenting, even if just for the time it take to get through a coffee, to help me realign with my true priorities.

As Psalm 90 reminds us, we sometimes need help to ‘number our days’, to recognize that our time is finite, and so to pray for a heart of wisdom of how best to use the time that we have.

Refocus

Once you have had a chance to take stock again, and perhaps identified some ways you would like family life to change, it’s time to take action.

If your time of reflection has brought up for you how much you would love to be simply play with your kids more or being able to linger a little longer after that last bedtime story, then the next step is to find small and manageable way to start to action this in your life.

Significant changes don’t have to be huge. As that famous Chinese proverb puts it, every journey begins with a single step. Small and regular moments of our undivided attention can do so much for children who are so often craving this connection with us.

Whatever you would like to see more of in your home, however you would love to engage with your kids more, start small and think regular and you will see a big impact.

Let Stuff Go

As we make more time to engage with our kids, there will inevitably be things we have to let go. This might be some jobs around the house, and they could well be things that in themselves do have value – just as they were for Martha.

Jesus often reminds us, however, that so much of living well is about knowing where to make our priorities and what to let go. Consider, for example, the parable of the Rich Fool in Luke 12. Here Jesus reminds his followers how easy it is to work away for things that, at the end of the day, simply pass away.

Don’t spend your life working for things that perish and fade, Jesus says. Give yourself and your time to those things that matter most.

And what could be a more important way to spend our time than engaging with our kids and building them up to be all they can be? But to do this, we may well need to let some things go to focus our time and attention on what really matters.

If you feel like life, and all its busyness, is leading to you feeling disengaged from your kids then you are not alone. Parenting is hard. It is busy. And it is easy to lose track of what matter most.

By taking time to find perspective, refocus and to let some stuff go, I hope you can find that balance you are craving in your home and see the benefits as you engage with your kids, giving them the very best of you.