The Never Ending Day

As I sit here on a Sunday night, thinking about the work week ahead, I ponder the life of a typical child that we cater to in our childcare programs and often and it gives me pause to thank God for the simplicity of my own 80's childhood.

I am not one to lament about the days gone by and try to make it sound like the world is a terrible place because it changed over the last 50 years. Change is inevitable, and of course every era one grows up in is the "best" era after all.  I think this is a great era, though it is certainly more complex and kids seem to have less time to themselves than I did growing up.

What I dwell upon with kids today in comparison to my own childhood, is the length of a child's day, and how often times it means children don't have time to make choices, or do anything more than what everyone else around them has decided they should do.

An average child's day that I see, is they wake up for school, often times delivered on the doorstep to a morning care program as early as 7 a.m. They leave that program and go directly to their own workday (which not ironically resembles the work day for many adults) sitting at a desk doing "work". Learning it is called, but humdrum, most of the day. From dismissal they go to after school program and are there as late as 5:30 p.m. and many are then skirted off to basketball, cheer, baseball, football, soccer, or whatever other sport is being offered at the time. Nowadays, sports don't even end. There used to be seasons for various sports, but for whatever reason baseball, basketball, soccer, and football go all year long and never end with travel, competition (which seems never to end) extended seasons, indoor complexes that conveniently allow typical outdoor sports to take place all year long. Often times kids are fed on the go, and then they have to do more work at home assigned by the schools. In speaking and observing a lot of kids, it is apparent that many of them have no interest in being part of some of the things that are put upon them. One might think they would have time to catch up on the weekend, but I don't think so. More sports. More soliciting for school or...sports. Church. Church school (more work), and maybe a lazy afternoon if they're lucky. And guess what....summer...more sports. it seems as some of these sport practices go until 8 pm at night on school nights now.

I recall growing up that after school and weekends were free play times all the time. Of course, I detested team sports and my mother thankfully didn't force me to play them. I played with my GI Joe's, hung out with friends, played in the woods, invented games, had adventures, rode my bike with friends for miles to get to a lake so we could take a canoe out and tip it over and catch the air pockets underneath. We fished, swam in the creek, explored new territories, tussled with kids that weren't in our circle, lit off fireworks that we found at one of our houses, hunted for bottles in the woods to make money on the returns, among many...many....many other things that didn't involve wearing a uniform and attending daily practices. My joy was every day, all the time. Free from constraints. Free to be myself. To figure out the world. To make choices about how I was going to spend my open time slots.

If my typical childhood day was like the average child's day today...let's just say I probably would have gone insane. I'm a huge believer in the value of imaginative and creative play. It makes the difference between kids who grow up to be adults that want to be part of a system, and adults that make the system.

Of course, parents work hard to provide for their children, so wrap around childcare programs are important, but the best ones are play-based and encourage creativity. School is school and not much can be done about that. But those evening times and weekend times....now those are the hours to consider. Does a child need to be in every sport imaginable and under the sun because it is offered all year round? How much time does your child have to play by himself or with friends? How much choice does your child have in what he or she truly wants to do with his non-work times?

Our need to structure our child's life is understandable as parents to a certain degree, but giving children opportunities to do nothing more than play, invent, explore, create, and seize moments to be at peace is just as valuable as the unending barrage of structured activities we put on their plate daily in the name of "keeping them busy." 

Even a single weeknight or weekend day where you have nothing planned for them to do would be a great opportunity for them to plan for themselves. Oh, and when they have those moments...take away their electronics (that's a whole other blog entry).