Thread
:
The NY Times Article
View Single Post
Meeko
06:37 AM 02-26-2019
Originally Posted by
mommyneedsadayoff
:
That lady is crazy! What world is she living in? Parents are not spending more time with their kids. Dropping them off at 10 different activities every week after long days at school or daycare is not "spending time" with them. She seems to think that the time and money spent facilitating their participation in those activities somehow translates into "intensive parenting". I honestly couldn't finish the article...I felt anxiety reading it, but maybe I just need more coffee.
I wonder if screens were ever factored into her intensive parenting narrative. With phones and tablets present, the small amount of time a kid gets to stay home is usually spent in front of some type of screen, so my opinion of parenting these days seems so far off from this lady.
I have purposely under scheduled my kids for all of our sake. They need to just be home and allowed to relax. We ALL do. My husband and I both work outside the home 40-45 hrs a week and we want to stay home in the evenings and on the weekends. It's important for us to reboot as well so we can be better parents/coworkers. But we have gotten flak from some of our friends and family who schedule their kids in numerous activities. To them, they see it as us being lazy and not giving our children opportunity. For us, just being together and spending time with each other feels like the most important thing we could do for them and ourselves. We are parents, but we are still people and we have a marriage to tend to as well, so just being home together seems to work well for us. We cook together, we go to the park together, we went sledding last weekend together, but we also lay around the house together. Our kids are only seven and nine and we feel there will be plenty of time for sports and other activities as they get older. But just being together, at home, or doing activities we all enjoy, like going to a movie, seems like a better way for us to spend our time, versus running from one place to the next. I'm sure that will come soon enough once they get really into sports or other activities...I'm in no hurry to bring it on even sooner!
Reply