I was thinking about the pace of our lives and how we push ourselves to the limit and schedule every free moment.
Are we nuts?
That is a question that someone asked me a few weeks ago as we talked about their family schedule. It was typical of many families with both parents working and with a couple of kids in hockey, dance and other activities, in other words, very busy. I readily answered in the affirmative, half jokingly, but half, not joking.
What ever happened to unscheduled time for children? Why do children have their days full of planned activities? I don't have any answers, but I do think that we need to ask those questions.
1 comment:
I have children whose involvement in activities is limited. They each have three activities, two of which are the same,occur on the weekends and take up approximately 2 1/2 hours. The other activity requires two hours once a week for each of them. This gives them plenty of downtime, time to be kids, time to do homework and time to go to bed at a decent hour. I can certainly see the benefit of limited activities but sometimes the guilt takes over. Am I a bad parent because I am not interested in committing my child or myself to hours worth of a sport a week? Are my children going to say, "I wish my parents would have let me..." when they are older? Am I doing them an injustice? I have heard many people say that kids that are very involved in all sorts of activities are less likely to become involved with drugs and alcohol. Is this true? How much effect does parenting have on the decisions children make? I wish I had the answers.
-Moi
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