A phone promise to myself

I spent some time in Panera this afternoon while Frick and Frack were at Hebrew School. It was 5pm-ish and a woman about my age came in with her two little girls (about the same ages as Fred and Four) for dinner. They sat at a table right in front of me. It was pretty crowded there, and the younger girl picked the table because it had three chairs and they had three people. The girls sat nicely and waited for the food. They decided they didn't really like the food that Mom had ordered. But, they wanted the apple and chips, just not the soup or sandwich. Mom was ok with that and then the trips to the garbage can started. First the older girl found a chip that was green. Need to get that in the trash immediately. Then the younger girl found a brown spot on her piece of apple. Immediate trash also. Then they wanted more drinks. One spilled and the napkins needed to get into the trash can right away. Mom was not at all paying attention. She had her phone out and was checking her email or Facebook or any of a variety of things you can do on your phone. I get it. I do it all the time too. But it was very clear to me that these girls were trying pretty darn hard to get their mom to see them.


One thing that I think we're all guilty of is not seeing our kids. Sometimes life gets in the way. You are expecting that important email about something. Or need to obsessively check Facebook to see if your cousin posted pictures of her newborn baby. This is the way of the world these days. We are expected to be connected at all times. And we expected it of ourselves as well. So, in the (not-so-distant) past, if we weren't home when the important email came in, it would have to wait until we got home. And we'd have to wait until our cousin sent those pictures of the newborn to us directly, instead of seeing them on Facebook immediately. It was ok if things had to wait 30 minutes or 3 hours. The only life that happened in the immediate was what you were doing at the moment.

So if you were out to dinner with your kids, you didn't have the option of obsessively checking your phone or playing Angry Birds or Words with Friends, you had to see your kids. Really see them. You were given no choice but to notice that they were getting up and throwing things in the garbage can repeatedly. You saw them spilling the water and sometimes (not all the time, but sometimes) were even able to catch the cup before the water got everybody soaking wet. Now, it's just water, and it dries - no biggie. But the biggie was those little girls wanted to be seen by their mom. And she was too busy to see them.

This made me sad. Really sad. Not just for those girls - their mom is probably a great mom who does see them a majority of the time, but for my own kids. How many times have I been that mom. The non-seeing mom. I'll bet it's more frequently than I'd like to believe. So, I'm making a promise to myself right now. I'm going to be better about this. No more endless phone checking when I'm with the kids. I'm not giving my phone up, but I'm going to be more moderate about it. I will see my kids. I promise.