Wednesday, April 19, 2006

April 19, 2006--Organizing to Relax

I’m old enough to remember that a typical weekend included bike riding; a pick-up game or two of basketball in the schoolyard; some TV; and a visit with aunts, uncles, and cousins. It wasn’t until the 7th grade that I was on an actual team, had a coach, or anything resembling a uniform. I had no organized preschool activities, play dates, or sleepovers. And thus, my parents didn’t need to do any chauffeuring, didn’t need to coordinate schedules with other parents, and didn’t need to spend endless weekend hours watching me run up and down the soccer field or fumbling ground balls at short stop.

How things have changed!

So much so that there are now national organizations set up to help parents recapture their overscheduled weekends. The author of a piece in the NY Times about this latest movement, Putting Family First (linked below), reports that her husband’s goal this year, which has thus far been unattainable, “is to take a nap on the couch during daylight hours.” He is too busy racing from basketball games to school plays.

PFF and other groups such as Balance 4 Success and Ready, Set, Relax (check their Websites) help families plan evenings where all activities pause—no homework lessons, no video games, no sports, no meetings—families just stay home and even manage to eat a meal together!

It is one thing to blame all of this frenzy on hyper-parenting where mothers and fathers are in a race to keep up with the neighbors and build resumes for their children that will hopefully put them at a competitive advantage when applying to college. But the parents themselves are in a race of their own—new technologies are enabling them to work from anywhere and at any time, including from home evenings and weekends. What with BlackBerrys and Blue Tooth computers and phones they can put in even more hours of work than their bosses require as one way to stay ahead in the office game, talking competitive pride when sending out an e-mail at 6:30 a.m. on a Sunday right before waking the kids and schlepping them off to gymnastics practice.

If you are an occasional reader of this blog you know me well enough by now to be thinking that I would be suspecting that these Family First organizations are really quasi-religious groups that are emphasizing quality family time as a strategy to get junior to cut back on guitar lessons so they can, as a family, spend more time praying together.

I may have missed that hidden agenda when scrutinizing their Websites, but it seems to me that they just want kids to have a more spontaneous, less pressured childhood. And for parents to be able to get in a little nap time. I’m for that.

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