Sumer Is Icumen In
Just heard on the radio one of those cloying, do-gooder public service announcements: "Help your teenager to have a productive summer!"
And I was thinking to myself: no, no, NO! Why in the world should kids have to worry about having a "productive" summer? Don't we schedule them to the gills already?
I think back to the gloriously nonproductive summers I used to have when I was a youngster. Exploring on dirt roads between the fields outside of town with my friends. Digging a hole several feet deep out in the back yard. Having a 75-lap neighborhood bicycle race in our driveway. Reading Thor Heyerdahl's
Have a productive summer?! Yeah, right, learn young how to be a cog in the machine...
posted by paul @ 6:54 AM
2 Comments:
... staring off into thick air ...
Interestingly enough, I've started getting calls from parents expressing interest in perhaps maybe convincing-coercing-guilting-bribing me into letting their kids share parts of my kids unproductive summer.
The plan seems to be that I'll watch the kids. Making sure no one goes to the hospital or spends all day playing video-games.
In an odd ironic twist, although I'm known as a complete control freak with organized closets, I run a gloriously nonproductive Summer. I plan nothing, except an endless supply of pop-cycles and an extra sprinkler in case the puppies chew up the one in the yard. No kid ever wants to go home from my house. Even little kids. (ok, well, rarely-occassionally I do spontaneously announce that its Pajama-Day and we spend all day in our jammies reading and napping and playing board-games)
In fact, tonight I talked on the phone to a woman I have met only once who wanted to make sure that her boy was on my list of potential guests at my convienance!
I don't understand why they don't just "un-plan" their own Summer!
So, so true.... We try to *not* overschedule our girls. I am of the opinion that "self entertained down time" is just as important as "activities."
Of course, the Uber Mommies think I'm nuts.... and that's okay.
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