Greta tore out an article for me at the OT’s office titled, “How to Let Kids be Kids“. I knew it was up my alley when I saw the title picture of kids running through a big mud puddle. It basically talks about the benefits of not over-scheduling your kids, how society hypes up over-scheduling and how to get your kids to discover simply playing.
I think the majority of the time, our lives reflect the ideas this article. So this is one of the few articles that makes me feel like a good parent. (: Most of the time it’s just my laziness, not my intention, that he plays with a cardboard box for an hour…and this article says he may learn more from the box play then a planned activity. Yea!
As far as over-scheduling, this is a hard one. We just started JJ in “scheduled stuff” last year which includes summer day camps and soccer. I don’t think any of the kids will be drastically over-scheduled b/c we are too cheap. But I want to be aware of when enough is enough.
I think this article assumes that your child is more independent than not. Luckily, all of my boys are, but I wonder if their independence is a result of their personalities or of my ignoring them…..I mean fostering their independence. Any comments?
September 11th, 2008 at 9:34 am
Andy and I both think you guys are the best parents we know, and one of the many reasons for that is you don’t seem to force a lot of things on the boys. Of course there is routine and activities, etc, but you let them be themselves and you let them figure out what they really like, instead of being taught or told what they like. You’re not afraid to let them get messy or leave them to just use their imaginations (i.e. with a box). That’s how we all grew up–playing outside with only each other to entertain us most of the time. We didn’t have every second of the day scheduled or video games, etc. And I think we all turned out just fine