The time to do it.

To help our babies and young children get an excellent start in life is as easy as it is difficult. I must agree that that sounds complicated. What do I mean? Exactly this: those who have the time and know-how will find it easy while those who never have the time nor the know-how will find it difficult although I am talking of the same topic which is giving our children a headstart in life, physically, spiritually and mentally.

However, admittedly, every family is different. There are those families who have time for almost anything while there are those who just find it hard to have time with their families. How far is this true?

Well, like it or not, we have just twenty-four hours a day. Of course, even if all of us put in all that time for our families only, the quantity and quality of the things done will differ from one individual to another. Why?

First, there is the passion, the interest, the strength of the desire to do the best for the family.

Then, there is the attitude. What kind of attitude a person has towards responsible for the welfare of his/her family? Does he/she feel that whatever he/she does not do, will be done by the other better half? Then, what if both husband and wife were to think along that same line?

Next, what is our priority? Is the excellent development of our child our priority? Is it important enough to forgo other things? This is also part of our attitude towards the idea of family.

If our priority is the development of the whole family in a marriage, then we should have thought of the need for responsibility, time and expenses towards, first one additional person, then another as time gets on. If we have no time for a wife, then we ought not to think of marriage. And if we do not have time for children, we should not concieve our first child. When we, it can be between our partner and us, are capable of carrying out such responsibility, sharing time and having sufficient funds to manage a home, then can there be a successful marriage. Of course, there must be love in the first place for this dream to begin.

The dream of a successful marriage can start but it may be shattered if; like so many Hollywood marriages where time is insufficient to share as they put in every effort to reach even greater heights in their career, giving priority more to fame than marriage success; insufficient time and attention is given for the dream to materialise successfully.

Likewise, if we dream of having our children have outstanding success in life, we must put in enough time and attention to the dream for it to become reality.

So, we must have the time. It just means that we have to manage our time well. How do we do it. Thinking and planning, then acting on it, is how things are achieved.

We need about eight hours sleep and eight hours work to have sufficient rest and finance to support our family. (Here again, there are people who put in more time than that into their work.) Then there is time spent on the road, moving to and from work. Let us give a guy two hours for that. That leaves us six hours for the other things which could be done together with the family, such as eating, watching television, reading, story-telling, chatting, outings and other activities.

Obviously, the more time we have, the more we can possibly achieve. In fact, we, ourselves, may not have more than six hours but our children have more than twelve hours to learn and reach the highest potential possible in every sphere of life. You see, a child does not work during the first six or seven years of his/her life. Other than sleep, he has the rest of the time to learn. either from the parents, the guardians or a childminder.

In time-management, the hours available is the same. Only the activities can be changed. What activities can we forgo? What activities will not help our child and our family grow? Such activities can be struck off, at least for the first six or seven years of our child's life. Thus, if we had spent two hours on those activities, we can have an additional two hours to move our dream along. So, time and activities are up to us to manipulate so as to get the most out of it.

If we have guardians, relatives, childminders or whoever care for our children when we are not around, one criteria will be: How much time can these people give to our children? Are our children to be left to themselves most of the time? How much time do they get to learn things and improve themselves so as to raise their potential?

In all that we wish to achieve, we have to start on it and having no time is usually the worst excuse given. The time is ours to use. So, use it wisely.

Besides