Empty time is not a vacuum to be filled. –Harry R. Lewis
A little over two years ago when I had just gone back to work—back to work as in a salaried, scheduled, signed-on-the-dotted-line position in a school—I arrived home to find my favorite parenting magazine in the mailbox. Anticipating a cup of coffee and some gentle mental stimulation, I carried the issue of Wondertime into our apartment and dropped it on the kitchen table. One of the titles on the cover caught my eye and my heart sank:
I am not exaggerating when I say that it took more than a year for me to open the pages of the magazine and confront that article. I carried the issue back and forth to the gym for a few months but never took it out of the bag. With the best intentions, I tossed it into my carry-on bag every time I flew, into my backpack for every weekend away, into my tote every time I headed to a coffee shop for an hour or two of reading time. I moved it around the apartment, from the pile of reading material on the coffee table to the decorative piles and baskets of magazines and books on various other pieces of furniture.
I wanted to read that article, I really did. I was certain that the ideas contained within would fit with my hopes and goals for our family. But when it came to actually opening the pages and moving my eyes over the words, of absorbing the ideas and challenges found in The Unhurried Child, I was a complete coward.
I was like an addict, unwilling and incapable of looking myself in the mirror. Somehow I knew that opening up to those pages would put me face-to-face with the questions that would have been eating at my heart if I had not been so adept at forcing them back down below the surface.
Was I living a hurried life and raising a hurried child?
Probably. When I finally read the article, Catherine Newman’s description of our practice of hurrying children through the day, through even their leisure time, hit close to home. While I have never felt like we were overly scheduled, having more than two commitments a day when you have young children sets anyone up for those moments of hurrying and nagging, of interrupting the child’s play and process, of valuing the clock and its numbers over almost all else.
I knew that this reading would force me to evaluate my choices. And it did. It was a more gentle push than I expected (Thank you for that, Catherine). This reading and a series of events and longings and discussions and other readings have lead me to the place I am in this year, a place of working with intention at limiting our obligations and providing more time for WJ and for our family that is free from the pressing need to move on to the next thing.
But it is not easy and I am often weak. I am sitting here looking at a pile of registration forms for extracurricular activities for the winter sessions and I am overwhelmed. It seems very easy to make the wrong decisions. I know that I do not want to break our commitment to going slow but the possibility of missing out on something sits like a miniature me in a red devil unitard on my left shoulder. And I am fretting.
What would WJ really enjoy doing with the time we have? How much is too much for a five-year-old? How much is too much for our family? Which of these activities are ones that will feed a passion growing in our child? Which will meet the needs he has, strengthen those places where he needs to grow?
Piano, drama, soccer, karate, dance, swimming… I’ll let you know what we decide. I am hoping with a great hope that our choices will be made with slow and unhurried in mind.
How do you decide? What guidelines do you keep when choosing activities for yourselves and your children?