Text 6 Kids’ tips for working parents

Family life has changed dramatically. In the past, most children had an employed father and a housewife mother. Today many live either with two employed parents or in a single-parent household where the one parent works. How does this affect family life? To find out, we consulted experts, children themselves, more than a thousand of them. They voiced their thoughts and concerns, and many made creative suggestions. Here are some of the tips these kids offer to their working parents: Children want to know about the world of work. One nine-year-old remarked, “My friend doesn’t even know what his mother does at her job. I think that’s weird.” When you talk about your job, your child can develop an image of how you spend your working hours rather than wondering what you do every day. “My father works all the time,” says Kathy, fourteen. “He leaves around 7 a.m. and doesn’t come home until 7 p.m. By then we’ve eaten and he eats by himself, mostly in front of the TV. Even on weekends he goes into the office”. Many children believe their parents value success on the job more than being a good parent. One high-school student remarked, “Everyone thinks my mom is terrific because she’s smart and works hard and is famous. She had time to travel all over the country giving talks. The only person she has no time for is me”. Children also resent it when parents are at home but working. They want to play with the parent but cannot, and must avoid bothering the parent. Listen to the parental statements children repeated to us: “Don’t bother me,” “ Can’t you see I’m busy?” and “What do you want now?”. He hasn’t seen you for many hours, and needs to know you care enough simply to be near and to listen.

Can’t you see I’m busy? (this utterance is emotionally colored and the speaker’s energetic attitude is expressed by the high emphatic rising tone as it is an emotional question.)

What do you want now? (this utterance is emotionally colored. The speaker’s attitude is rather negative, so that’s why the most suitable expressive means here to show speaker’s irritation is the High Emphatic Falling Tone.)

He hasn’t seen you for many hours, and needs to know you care enough simply to be near and to listen. (this utterance represents a combined tune consisting of 2 adjacent intonation groups which are in coordinative relations which means their equal semantic importance. The most typical tone sequence of coordination is reduplication of tones. In this case we’ve used 2 High Falling Tones as it’s a straight-forward statement and the speaker’s attitude is neutral)

Single-parent - an example of so-called ‘false’ composite word, which consists of an adjective an a noun, where the adjective characterizes the noun. So in this case we have double stress-pattern.

Fourteen – a composite word, a numeral, which in English usually have 2 primary stresses. But in speech one of the stresses may be lost due to the rhythmic structure of the phrase. The suffix ‘teen’ is added to the rout ‘four’.