On Teaching Your Kids to Wait Well

(Photo: Lightstock)

I did not want to write about screens. I did not want to because, Lord knows, we are struggling to figure out screens for our own family. We make rules and guidelines, find them hard to stick to, and before you know it, we are back where we started with too much screen time. It feels like once you open Pandora’s box regarding devices, there’s almost no going back.

But then, I was in our dentist’s waiting room on two different occasions, and what I witnessed gave me a sort of “Scrooge” moment: a moment of clarity on my future if I don’t do something to protect our screen boundaries. Without judgment, and with empathy for the exhaustion and pressure we parents face, I encourage us to take stock of what we allow regarding screens, and what missed opportunities might be slipping through our fingers.

On our first visit, I sat in the waiting room with my five children, most of them watching the TV on the wall, while I stared at the family across from me. There was a mom, a dad and a girl of no more than 5. Each person was completely absorbed in their own phone, including the young girl with a personalized, blinged-out phone case. They were leaned over, phones completely in their faces, wholly unaware of their surroundings.

On my second visit, I sat in the same waiting room with my teenage son when a teenage girl and an elementary-aged boy walked in, both with headphones on and eyes glued to their phone and tablet, respectively, before they even sat down. The mother came over, looked at her children, who were oblivious to the world, and reluctantly pulled out her own phone.

With a pang in my heart, I turned to my teenage son (who did not have a phone on him) and struck up a conversation. It was a little awkward at first, but it quickly turned toward his favorite topic of conversation — aviation. At some point, I pulled out my phone to look up a fact about an airplane, but I intended to spend that time waiting with my son. I only have three more years with him under my roof, after all, and I don't want to look back and see that I wasted these moments of connection by letting us get completely absorbed in our devices.

Just like Scrooge’s Ghost of Christmas Future, I did not like the vision I saw in the dentist’s waiting room. From that time on, I began to look at our screen use with renewed intention. I considered why it is important to teach our children to wait well, along with how to use waiting as an opportunity to cultivate better relationships with my kids.

So much of parenting is shuffling kids around, taking them to sports and appointments and making them do their homework. But how often do we allow our children to be seen? Even in the waiting room, there are opportunities for connection, a chance to hear what’s on their mind or to make a memory by noticing something together.

I know that many children are used to waiting: at the bus stop, in line for lunch, for their turn with a teacher. At home, they might be used to waiting for dinner or for a ride to practice, but how often do parents talk to their kids while waiting? “Wasting time” in connecting with your kids is the best investment for your future relationship with them, and in their future relationships as well. I love this piece from Jordan Langon in Denver Catholic on how to have the best summer ever, because it’s about presence and downtime, not busy trips or expensive outings.

Kids learn through experience, and we teach them to wait well when we model it ourselves. Teach them to ask interesting questions, make eye contact, wait for a response and have thoughtful answers by doing those very things when you talk to them. Yet while we should model good conversational skills, we must also model patience. How often do we wait in silence, or do we pull out our phone each time we have a minute?  Learning to wait well prepares us for Heaven, since a prayerful life requires waiting on the Lord.

Silence is a prerequisite for contemplative prayer, and we can never achieve deep union with God without the ability to be silent in his presence, to be recollected in our inner mind, heart and soul. Every moment we have to wait in a doctor’s office, at a bus stop, in a grocery line or at a red light is an opportunity to practice being still and waiting for the Lord. Only in silence can we hear the Lord speak to us in our hearts. How will our children ever learn to hear God — or love him — if they do not know how to embrace the waiting and the silence?

Our interior life need not be a scary place we avoid with distraction, for it is in the quiet center of ourselves that God wants to meet us and heal us with his tender love. Waiting well helps us become comfortable with the silence. We cannot create space for silence and recollection if we let kids use screens whenever they wait, so we must set boundaries and limits on our devices.

Here are a few of our basic rules that might help you create your own boundaries:

• All devices in our home must have filtering software.

• No one “owns” their device. Our kids share a phone, iPad and computer right now, so no one can be possessive. There is accountability in sharing.

• With some exceptions, screens stay out of bedrooms and are used in public places. We do not bring them to appointments or on errands.

• We have family meetings to determine screen use, time limits, etc.  We acknowledge when a plan doesn’t work and are committed to trying again.

• Life is meant to be lived. We often talk about the dangers of screen addiction and why we are working to live a more joyful, human, holy life.

To that end, we try to have fun as a family and look for opportunities to connect with our kids. We want to admit our failures with screen use and try again, while modeling small steps toward discipline. I write this not as someone who always does it right when it comes to setting boundaries, but as someone who is convicted to keep on trying.

Next time I visit the dentist’s waiting room, I would love to see a whole bunch of parents chatting with their children, and maybe one of them will be you.