Play

Building inroads into our kids' hearts takes time, both in the duration of days-months-years sense and the number of minutes spent each day sense. Bringing a life into the world is a beautiful thing, but just because we do this part doesn't mean we'll automatically have a deep and meaningful lifelong connection.

If we want this, we need to start connecting to our kids' hearts early. From infancy, they need to hear our voice, feel our touch and sense our love. And from early on, the best way to accomplish all of these is to be on our hands and knees with them and just play.

They'll need our teaching, protection and provision because we're the parents, but they desperately need our affection, for this is what gives us access into their hearts, not the bits of wisdom falling from our mouths or the roof or food we provide. It's all about knowing that we enjoy them and, in their minds, this is firmly connected to playing with them.