Slower childhood

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parenting

A Slower Childhood freeing the kids from the time squeeze

Parenting

A Slower

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Childhood

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You may have heard of the slow food movement, which focuses on the sustainable growing and savouring of food. Well, we at FRANKLY think it’s time for a slow childhood movement.

Racing Parenting

Through Childhood?

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We’re not talking about doing everything at a snail’s pace – we know most kids are great at that already, especially when it comes to doing chores or getting ready for bed!

But in our culture the default setting seems to be to cram as much as we can into our lives, and this expectation is often as intense for children as it is for adults. After a six or seven-hour school day, after-school activities, homework, and chores, even

primary-school aged children can have very little time for rest, reflection, or free play before bedtime. Weekends are often just as busy.

Sometimes when children seem to be moving too slow, it might be a natural reaction to their world moving too fast.

Time Squeeze | Sport, music, martial arts, dance, drama, languages...If you feel like your life is dictated by the kids’ activity schedule, it might be time to rethink the family priorities.

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Space to

Grow

An increasing number of experts are warning that children lack adequate time to play, to rest, to reflect, and to figure out for themselves what they care about and who they want to be.

Child rearing is more an art than a race, requiring a balance between burdening children with parental expectations, or at the other extreme, indulging them so much that they are not encouraged to grow into responsible and resilient adults.

Our slow childhood movement is about allowing time for the things that matter the most in forming healthy, happy people, including time for children to be carefree.

“Leisure time is something good and necessary, especially amid the mad rush of the modern world...Yet if leisure time lacks an inner focus, an overall sense of direction, then ultimately it becomes wasted time...Leisure time requires a focus - the encounter with Him who is our origin and goal.�

Pope Benedict XVI | Vienna in 2007

Parenting

What the Experts Say

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Johann Christoph Arnold, author and counsellor

Children have a right to down-time We know children learn best through playing, but play also brings joy, contentment, and detachment from the troubles of the day. In our frantically overscheduled culture, every child should have a right to play.

Their Name is Today: Reclaiming Childhood in a Hostile World.

Bill Doherty, author and family therapist

Stop over-catering to kids If we see ourselves only as providers of services to our children (and indeed, this is one important part of parenting), we end up confused about our authority, anxious about displeasing our children, insecure about whether we are providing enough opportunities, and worried that we are not doing enough to keep up with other parents. In a market economy, the service provider must offer what is newest and best, and must avoid disappointing the customer. When applied to the family, this is a recipe for insecure parents and confused kids.

Dohertyrelationshipinstitute.com

Susanne North, Family Educator at St Margaret Mary’s, North Randwick.

Learning is child’s play Play provides happiness and develops children’s gross and fine motor skills. The volume of recent research also shows that children perform better academically and socially when they come from home environments that have provided ample opportunity to play freely.

Play gives children an opportunity to engage in healthy risk taking where they can hone and learn new skills in their own time. It enables children to build their own confidence and self-esteem, and pursue their own interests, which in turn develops intrinsic motivation, a driver for academic learning. Engaging in open-ended and selfdirected play also strengthens the synaptic connections in the brain and assists in the development of self-regulations such as controlling one’s emotion, impulses, behaviour and other cognitive processes.

CathFamily.org, November 2013 eMagazine

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Parenting

Parenting

Unstructured

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Play

One of the biggest casualties of the ‘fast kids’ phenomenon is the loss of unstructured play. When kids are left to create their own entertainment, a number of important things happen: 1. They seek the company of siblings and neighbours which helps them to develop their social skills and appreciation that they are part of a family, a neighbourhood, and a nation.

2. They learn how to involve kids of various ages, abilities and interests.

3. They craft new games and invent new scenarios for role playing.

4. They get more outdoor time and creative play time (compared with more solitary electronic time).

5. They learn how to resolve disputes and negotiate rules for fair play.

Structured activities have a place and can be a great way for a child to learn a new skill, make new friends, feel part of a team and experience competitive play. However, if there are too many structured activities, kids simply don’t have the time or energy for spontaneous neighbourhood ball games or fantasy play.

Instead, they learn to rely on adults to provide their entertainment and can absorb the attitude that the community ‘owes’ them entertainment and support in pursuing their interests. This sets them up for a self-centred, narcissistic mentality which will hinder them in forming healthy relationships of mutual respect.

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More is not necessarily better | One of the things driving the rise in narcissism (extreme self-centredness) is over indulgence by parents during childhood.

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Rethinking

Boredom

It seems like boredom is a cardinal sin in family life these days. Should a child complain of boredom, many parents spring to action in a frantic rush to relieve this perfectly healthy and valuable emotion.

Boredom is the crucible of the imagination; it creates the ‘space’ in a busy mind for creativity to be explored and expressed.

Yet for many parents, their child’s boredom is taken as a judgment on their failure to provide sufficient stimulation for their child. Through all the goodwill in the world, they try to distract the child from the creative process by seeding it with ideas or in-filling it with activity. In truth, a parent’s unwillingness to let a child endure boredom ultimately robs that child of an opportunity to let their creativity emerge and to learn how to self-manage their emotions and mental needs.

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Do you suffer from FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out)?

Parenting

Ideas

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Free play

Here are some ideas to help you get your kids off the scheduled activities and into some unstructured play.

Preschoolers

Primary Aged

1. Soapy-sudsy sink. Fill up the

1. Nature Hunt. Deal with the nature

kitchen sink with suds and get them experimenting with water in different containers. Then transition them to productive washing. They’ll feel important if you can trust them to wash some of your dishes and pots.

2. Homemade Kinetic Sand. Mix nine cups of sand with one cup cornflour. Add 1/4 cup dishwashing liquid, one cup of water, and one tablespoon eucalyptus oil. Less fluffy than the commercial stuff but still fun!

3. Grain Time. Set the kids up with a variety of grains (rice, lentils, sugar, flour, bread crumbs, etc.) in different containers. Provide them with some kitchen scales and a variety of cups, spoons, jars and bowls.

deficit disorder and get your kids hunting for a list of natural objects such as a feather, a flower, a twig in the shape of Y, a white stone, a piece of bark, a red leaf, etc.

2. Blanket Cubbies. A great wet weather activity; let them build their own retreat with blankets, sheets and towels. For a special treat, roll out the sleeping bags and let them stay the night.

3. Commerce. Help them create their own micro business venture. It might be a lemonade stand, sausage sizzle, homemade crafts, rescuing and selling old golf balls‌let them express their passion while connecting with your community.

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Teens 1. Cooking on an Outdoor Fire. Let them light it and cook a simple meal by themselves for the family. Then toast marshmallows and linger for a chat around the fire.

2. Neighbourhood Ball Games. Let them revive the great street cricket tradition, or shoot some baskets together.

3. Deconstruction therapy. Don’t throw that old phone, printer or appliance away‌ let your teen take it apart to study how it works. Who knows, they may even work out how to fix it!

The Sunday

Squeeze

Parenting

Finding time for Mass in a busy schedule Family life is busy. Even without children, our modern lives are packed with activities. No matter how many kids we have, it’s guaranteed that the activities will expand to fill the time available.

It’s so easy to become ‘activity junkies’!

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So how do busy people make time for Mass, and why would they want to?

Free Up Sundays

HOW TO GET THERE

Do chores on weekday nights.

Shop online after hours. Confine kids activities to other days.

After-Mass Bonus Keep the positivity going afterwards with a visit to the park, an ice cream shop or cafe. Yum!

Plan Ahead

Get A Routine

Schedule Mass ahead of time and fit other activities around it. Make Mass the priority or it will get squeezed out.

A regular Mass time helps to establish life-affirming friendships with other Mass-goers.

1. Feed your soul: Mass is a spiritual superfood.

Parenting

WHY MASS ?

2. Connect with others.

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3. Breathe, Rest: Get off the activity treadmill.

4. God said so: Do we need a better reason?

Recharge Here

Double Duty

Reduce Stress

If you are on the road, attend Mass near where you’ll be doing other things.

Find a good children’s liturgy or take appropriate books and bible activities to keep the little ones busy in the pew.

Through Sunday rest, daily concerns and tasks find their proper perspective; the material things we worry about give way to spiritual values Pope John Paul II | Dies Domini

Parenting

BusyNESS is a

Choice

56 Francine Pirola is the co-founder of CathFamily and the mother of five children.

A few years ago I stopped using the phrase “I don’t have time”.

I found that I was using it too often as an excuse and it was disempowering. I didn’t have time to exercise. I didn’t have time to read with my children. I didn’t have time to pray or go to Mass. It felt like my life was running me instead of the other way around.

The reality is: I have exactly the same amount of time as everyone else and I make time for the things that are important to me.

It’s really about priorities, not time. I realised that I had prioritised cooking gourmet meals over reading with the children. I had made relaxing in front of the TV more important than prayer.

Ouch! It was humbling to name the reality and to face my choices squarely. But it was also empowering: I could choose!

Instead of, “I don’t have time”, now I’m more likely to say, “I choose to spend my time doing this thing rather than that activity”. I choose it and I own it and I can change it anytime I want. I’m living more truthfully and more intentionally. And I’m living the life I choose, not the life chosen for me. F

Subscribe FREE to the monthly eMagazine from CathFamily for great ideas on making the home the heart of the Church. www.CathFamily.org

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God will never ask me to do more than is physically possible. If I lack time for an important priority, I must ask myself: what am I doing that is NOT God’s plan for me, but merely my own agenda?

Francine Pirola | www.cathfamily.org