Community Magazine October 2019

78 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE MARGARET BENHAMU TheWisdom O ne night several years ago, I was having dinner with two of my former classmates, and we were talking about our lives and generally catching up. One friend, who was still single at the time, was listening to me express the difficult time I was having with one of my children. I felt like I was always making mistakes and losing my cool with that child. My friend, Chana, said the words that would echo in my ears over the next ten years or so, “I feel like the most important thing is to just love your kids and everything else will be okay.” I almost scoffed at her at the time. She didn't have kids yet. She wasn't waking up at night with screaming babies, or was responsible for their well-being every single day. Her words were overly simplistic. Love – how cliché. And yet… I began to ask myself how I was showing love to my kids. Was I focusing on discipline too much? Was I balancing criticism with loving acts so that they knew deep down how I ultimately felt about them? The Bank Account of Love Over the course of time and in speaking with many parents, I have learned about love and the actions required to show that love. Relationships between any loving parties need to be looked at as a bank account. “Deposits” are the actions and words we use to show the other person that we value them and appreciate them for the people that they are. “Deposits” are the acts of love and kindness. “Withdrawals” are the hard discussions, the criticism, the yelling, the fighting, and the disappointments we may feel towards the other person. Here is the thing – we will ALL have to make withdrawals with our children and loved ones at some point. Often, many times a day, we will have to tell our children what they are doing wrong and why we are upset with them. Often, many times a day, we will not be in the mood to be a “good” mom or dad. We will tell that child to leave us alone or that we are very stressed out from them. We may even say hurtful words and do actions that are wrong and painful. Parenting is a hard, long-term battle that we are engaged in twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It is hard to be positive and calm for all of those hours. However, in this bank account where we need to make a lot of withdrawals, we have to first make sure that we have “money” in the bank. We have to make deposits in order to be able to make withdrawals and keep the relationship healthy. Deposits come in the form of encouragement, bedtime stories, hugs and kisses, loving actions, unexpected words of praise, and recognizing their strengths publicly or privately. Deposits must be made in order for there to be a counterbalance for the withdrawals. In order to counterbalance our human nature. In order to counterbalance the times we are feeling cold and not loving. Like my friend Chana so wisely told me so long ago - we just have to give them enough love and everything else will be okay. An Example of What Not to Do While running a parenting workshop on instilling values in the home, I came across a couple that never hesitated to speak ill of their children. They had four kids and it seemed as if all four of them were difficult, to say the least. They would tell us how their kids were “bad” and “obnoxious.” They had a hard time offering praise for any of them. It reached a point where the other parents in the workshop became uncomfortable. of LOVE