Last Tuesday, which seems like a million years ago, I had the chance to speak with Thomas Balmès, the Director of BABIES.  I hadn't seen the film, so I didn't have many questions about what was in the movie.  I  mean, babies, right?  

I'm pretty sure there are just lots and lots of babies doing lots and lots of baby things in the movie.

So we just talked.
We talked about his experiences around the world, and my experiences here in Philadelphia.  We talked about what it's like to be around people who don't look the way we do, speak the way we do, act the way we do.  We talked about what it's like to open your self and your heart and your eyes to the ways others are looking and speaking and acting.  We talked about cultural parenting differences that we've run across and little foreign tricks that we may have picked up along the way that we use with our own children.  And after we figured it all out, we agreed that what babies and children and parents everywhere need most is love given and time spent.  Not toys or clothes or silly things with bold black and white patterns to stimulate neural growth and visual acuity.  Not educational television or classical music pumped into their brains from the time of conception.  Not trips to the zoo or outings to the museum or eighty seven different games and books on the shelf.

Time and love.
And the opportunity to explore the world around them.

That's it.  That's what is most important.  He learned it by traveling all over the globe, I learned it from traveling all over the city.  The best and most well adjusted kids get plenty of time and plenty of love.  And we struggle to give those two things to our kids.  It seems that everything else is so much easier to give, doesn't it?
We have love.  We all have that, we all give that when we can.  It's the time that runs short these days.  We work, we sleep, we eat, but we rarely take time or make time to play.  To breathe.  To show our children the things we surround them with and what those things can do for them and what they can do with those things.

There used to be a stats page hung up at the office showing how much time parents spend playing with their children.  Pie charts and graphs and demographics and all that spelled out in four colors, blown up to poster size.  I forget what the specifics were, but it was something like working moms in the US and UK spend an average of 20 minutes per weekday actually playing with their children and working dads 11.  And it wasn't much more time for moms and dads that stay at home.
There is always something else to do.  Important stuff that has to be done like preparing meals and executing housework and flipping laundry and running errands and wiping noses and blowing arses (wait, reverse that) and the endless stream of emails and texts and phone calls and all that other grown up stuff gets in the way.  We may be with our children, but we aren't giving our whole selves to them.

And all our children want is us.  Despite the whining for the best new thing on the shelves or cooler sneakers or two cookies rather than one and three thousand other things, all they want is a little bit more time with their moms and dads.
And I'm willing to guess is all that we really want is a little bit more time with them.

I hope everyone has an amazing weekend.  Schedule some time for yourself, for your kids, for your pets, for your friends, and your mom.  Turn off the phone and the television and the world and take some time with the things and the people and the love that is around you.


But not before clicking here to help with my community service project: