Jumping with my daughter

I was finishing a story on transportation and money and blah blah blah (those are the words that go through my head, sometimes, when I'm doing stories on transportation and money and blah blah blah) when my 4-year-old daughter walked into the room.

"Oh, no," I thought. "My privacy is shattered! My silence is broken! No work will be done! Productivity shall cease!"

The first words out of Anna's mouth were, "You have to leave the room. We're playing here."

I have to leave? "Really?" I asked.

Suddenly, I felt scorned, like I did the day my junior prom date stood me up. Work suddenly felt so incredibly meaningless to me.

"Can't I stay?" I asked.

"OK," she said. Then she adopted that tone and used those words that, if they didn't come from the mouth of a 4-year-old, would sound like some bad Sci Fi Channel script.

"But you must play with us!" she said. "You must play with us now! You must stop your work!"

She walked in with her 4-year-old best friend and started jumping up and down on the bed. They tossed whatever papers I had laying there, and threw them on the floor. One was a paycheck (it was already cashed) that floated in the air like a leaf and landed on my lap.

Next thing I knew, I was jumping on the bed, too, only I was doing it from my knees. The ceiling in this room is too low for a 6-foot-2-inch, relatively sane man to be bouncing up and down, from his flat feet, on an elevated bed.

All productivity did, indeed, cease. But I treasure these moments because I feel like every little jump, every little toss of the papers, every moment of just being there with Anna will help make her a loving, independent, strong, confident child and adult.

When it comes to dealing with children, I look at the sum of the parts. Who needs to schedule playtimes with your own son or daughter? They love and thrive on spontaneity, so why not meet them at their level?

Every little spontaneous moment, whether it's five minutes or five seconds, brings me closer. And all those moments put together, I believe, have made her a better child, a loving child and a caring child who knows that her parents will there for them, even at a moment's notice.

I look at my older boys and I see how they're turning out, and how they're turning out just that way. Neither of them are followers. Both of them seem to have a strong moral compass, even if our senses of humor can be - at times - pretty sick.

But they care when other people are hurting. They can't wait to tell my wife and me when they're succeeding. For years, before they got too old for it, they liked nothing better than jumping - on the bed, with us.

I hear from some people who say we coddle our children too much, that we don't give them enough independence and we have a hard time letting them go. These are usually the same people who endorse the warehousing of children in daycare centers and preschools that cram 30 children in a small room with one teacher.

"Stick them in daycare," people tell us. "Make money, man! Go to Wall Street, find rich pastures!"

Don't get me wrong - I totally understand daycare and I understand why it's necessary. We have had our children in some of those same places, though never for very long. But I don't know anyone who truly loves it, or views it as nothing more than a no-alternative solution.

My wife and I have chosen the poorer alternative, even though it has us juggling schedules and working multiple part-time jobs.

But it's also opened up our schedules so we can be there, at that moment, when my daughter looks up at us with her big blue eyes, with her bangs dangling over them, and says:

"Wanna jump?"