Parents on dates with their kids
AS ANNABELLE Chew’s family grew bigger over the years, her ideas about spending quality time together evolved. Chew, 46, a vice principal of a preschool, and her husband, Victor Ong, 51, have five children aged between 3 and 21. She says: “Back when we had two or three kids, I used to think everybody must gather together for family time. But I realised as the children grew older, they had different needs and interests. It was better to be flexible, to connect with each child, one to one.”
She decided to go on individual outings with each child, in addition to spending time together as a family. Her husband sometimes does so too.
Over the years, their cycling sessions or meals out with individual kids expanded to include spa days or day trips. “The child gets undivided attention. You get to listen to each other. The bonding is a bit better,” Chew says.
Richard Hoon, chairman of Centre for Fathering, a nonprofit organisation, recently revealed that his late wife had advised him to “date” each of their three daughters individually.
In the article, he said he realised his children “equated love with time” and “all that mattered to them was that I was available for them”.
Now that he is 60, his daughters, who are in their 20s, take turns to “date” him.
Other parents who go on “dates” or even holidays with one child at a time agree it is worth making time.
Going on “dates” sends the message to children that they are special, which helps them feel secure and loved, says Theresa Bung, who counsels families and couples as the principal therapist at the charity, Family Life Society.
Kathryn Chai, 49, has gone on individual holidays with each of her four daughters and one son, aged between 8 and 23. With a heavy workload in the banking industry that had involved frequent regional travel, she says she missed out on part of her children’s growing-up years.
“I try and compensate by having one-on-one time with them. It’s how you connect with the child and tell his or her talents and preferences. We become more like friends,” says Chai.
On one trip in 2010, she trekked more than 4,000 metres up to Annapurna Base Camp in the Himalayas together with two of her daughters. She learned that Monica, now 20, and Maxine, 23, liked to sing as they trekked, while she preferred to walk in silence. She also saw a determination in Monica, who was about 12 then: Chai twisted her ankle slightly and both daughters had altitude sickness, but Monica pushed all three of them to complete the trek.
Eldest child Maxine, who works at an international asset management firm, says: “We take care of each other [on trips], it’s more like a friendship. Sometimes, I’m the ‘mum’.”
While overseas holidays with each child are probably too expensive for most families, one-on-one time can take the form of simple indoor activities, says Josephine Loh, a training manager at Morning Star Community Services, who develops family programmes.
She says: “Another way to give undivided attention to each child is to play together.” Lego blocks, jigsaw puzzles or card games, or sports such as football are suitable for younger children.
Fairness should be observed. Loh says: “Ideally, both parents could have individual ‘dates’ with the children as each parent plays a different role to the children.
“Parents will need to be fair to all their children in ter of understanding what each child needs so they can explain to the child the different activities, duration and frequency planned.”
Loh stresses that “dating” is just one way to bond.
“Individual ‘dates’ with children may not work for every family as family dynamics differ. The main objective is to build closer relationships between parents and children, and families can do this in different ways,” says Loh.
For Harjit Kaur, 46, simple outings with each of her two children helped her impart values to Banipreet, 14, and Jaskirat, 17, when they were younger.
It can be helpful to do things together, such as getting a frozen yogurt, and taking a walk together, as these give the child the space to voice his or her concerns to her in private, says Kaur.
The freelance trainer in family life ed- ucation adds: “Just talking may not work and, if the conversation is very parentdirected, it can be like an interrogation.”
Parent-directed or not, just talking on dates can get awkward when the children are older, but parents should do it anyway.
Marketing communications executive Denise Yuen, 24, recalls: “When you are a teen and dad tries to take you out on a coffee date and says to you, ‘Tell me about your life’, it’s awkward at first. You want to try because you see him trying and willing to put himself in that position. I’m glad my dad powered through. It was not easy especially during the teen years.”
What helped her father, Yuen Chee Onn, was the fact that he had been going on dates with each of his three children since they were in preschool.
Yuen, 57, head of engagement and outreach at Centre for Fathering, recalls going to the zoo every month for a year because his kids would ask to visit it either individually or as a family.
When the children grew older, they were more self-conscious and took more time to open up to him.
“The bonding you start in the early days will tend to stick in the later years,” says Yuen, who worked in banking before joining Centre for Fathering.
Yuen, who is his youngest child, says one-on-one time with dad was special because she and her siblings were already spending a lot of time with mum, who was a housewife for 16 years before becoming a relations manager at a Christian organisation.
“It felt different when dad did it. It’s a special feeling. You don’t expect fathers in general to be invested in your life in that way,” she says.
As a child, she used to ask Yuen to take her on double-decker bus rides for their “dates”. Now, they go for meals or exercise together and she even asks him for relationship advice.
She says: “It’s like we’ve come full circle. It’s back to that child-like sense of having no inhibitions, like when I asked him to let me sit on the top decks of doubledecker buses.”