Dear 21st Century parent, you are busy working hard for your child/children, but remember being a parent is more than paying bills and taking care of material needs. In fact, the greatest responsibility of a parent is to give time. This is why:

1. Time equals love. You cannot say you love someone yet don’t make time for them.

2. To give your child/children identity. Children who spend adequate time with their parents have a firm identity.

3. To correct the wrongs the outside world is teaching them. The world has many wrong views, behaviors and ideologies. How will you know those wrongs if you are not spending time? Only by being there will you know what your child/children are being exposed to.

4. To monitor their growth and give leadership.

5. To allow your child/children to know you. Daddy acts this way, mom likes this and that. Many children sadly don’t know their parents.

6. To identify their skills and talent in order to grow them. Don’t kill your child’s greatness by failing to know what your child is good at.

7. To model to them how to live and behave. A role model is not one who is absent.

8. To pray over the environment around them. You are most effective in determining the environment around your child/children by being there. That way you can pray against evil spirits and command angels into action through prayer.

9. To foster better communication. Time spent together makes your child/children comfortable with you making it easier to open up to you.

10. To show love through touch. A hug, a gentle rub on the back; children feel loved when touched.

11. To counter the negative words spewed at your child/children by naysayers, peers, bullies or even themselves. Encourage.

12. To give them sweet memories. When your child/children become adults, let them look back and remember time with you. No memory is as powerful as that of a loved childhood.