Time out or Time In? Making the most of Your Time and Your Child’s Time
“Don’t just do something. Sit there.” Thich Nhat Hanh says – which is the opposite of what we are usually told to do. We are so busy out there getting somewhere, doing something that we do rarely take time to just sit.
We have dragged our kids into this non-ending, running-in-circles marathon.
I think they are revolting.
This is not to say that ADHD is not a neurological issue. It definitely is. Yet, one has to wonder, how else will our children adapt to the inssesant schedules, information, inundation of more, more and more without any filters? They have to process information more rapidly or they won’t survive.
We schedule them, us, and some families are so busy they eat in their cars and have a change of clothes in there to change from one place to another. It’s no wonder kids update their status on facebook, they’re so busy, they don’t have time to talk in person and forget trying to schedule a playdate. Between each of the child’s schedules, working parents, homework, baseball, soccer, practice, PTA meetings, Girlscouts, church, birthday partiies, mom’s workout at the gym, Dad’s golf game and possibly mom and dad’s date night, where is the time?
There is no phone app for this.
Although, I believe there is one to remnd you to pee. Thank God. I don’t know about you but if I sit still for too long, I start to feel guilty. Like there is something I absolutely must do. This may or may not be true, but if I feel like this – I am certain I am communicating this to my children.
This is not good.
It’s time to re-evaluate how we spend our time and how we spend our children’s precious time. What would it look like if we took a day, OK, who am I kidding? How about an hour and just did nothing. What if we planned nothing and just see what happened? What would it look like if we just were hang’in with our kids…no phones, lists, computers, or tasks? Yea, it’d probably drive us nuts at first. We would most likely suffer some sort of withdrawal. Yet, I think in “time”, we might actually enjoy it, ourselves and our children just a tiny bit more.
“Don’t just sit there…do something!” We’re running out of time.