Making Memories With Your Child That Will Last a Lifetime

Posted on Aug 11, 2016 Topic : Men's Christian Living
Posted by : Charles Marshall

A few years ago, after I put my nine-year-old daughter to bed, I slipped back into her room to check on her and found her sound asleep as usual. On impulse, I moved an old derby hat that hung on her bedpost to a chair across the room, just to see if she would notice. The next day I saw she had moved the hat back to its usual place on her bed, so I moved it again to a different spot that night after she was asleep. I did this for several days, each night finding a new spot for the hat.

After several days, she finally asked me if I was the one moving her hat every night, and I fessed up. We both had a good laugh about it and I assumed the joke was over and we were finished with the game, but my daughter had other ideas. She wanted to keep the fun going and asked me to continue moving the hat. Somewhere about the second or third week, moving the hat transitioned to hiding the hat. The first thing my daughter did every morning when she opened her eyes was scan the room for that black derby, and then she would happily report her discovery that night when I put her to bed.

As time elapsed, the game adopted a few rules. One of them was that under no circumstances was I allowed to hide the hat in the same place more than once, so it wasn’t long before I was hard pressed for new spots to stash the hat. Sometimes my hiding places were painfully obvious, like hanging from the doorknob, poking out of one of her dresser drawers, or stuck on top of her book shelves. Other times, I felt fairly ingenious, stuffing it behind her headboard or cramming it behind the blinds. Once, I even taped it to the bottom of her craft table. Impressive, right?

After a while, the game ended of its own volition and we found other things to occupy ourselves with. But that memory is one of the treasures my daughter and I share. Every now and then we take it out, talk about it, and have a laugh together. It’s one of a hundred little stories that she will remember and tell her kids one day.

The longer that I’m a parent, the more I am convinced that connecting with my children is less about grandiose gestures and more about finding meaning in everyday moments. It’s not the fancy vacations or the expensive presents that connect me to my kids. It is the daily interaction. It is creating meaningful moments that no amount of money can buy.

What memories are you building with your kids? What treasures are you giving them that they will take with them on their journey? I would love to hear your stories. Maybe I’ll use some of your ideas with my kids and they will become our treasure too.