The Unhurried Child

I was upstairs yesterday, watching Vivian play in the tub while Sabine was watching Word World. The phone rang, and it was my friend Nancy, saying she had just been to our house and had knocked, but gotten no answer so she left an article for me under the table on our porch.

It was from the magazine WonderTime (I've seen a few issues, and it's pretty mainstream, but it does have some interesting things in it, as well as some nice, easy recipes...). The article she left was entitled The Unhurried Child, by Catherine Newman. An excerpt I particularly liked:

When it comes to time, children and adults are like different species thrown together in a cruel zoological experiment: We hurry exhaustedly to and fro while our kids dawdle around with boundless energy. A child sitting on the floor with untied shoes, for example, might well exasperate his late and waiting grown-ups, but those moments unwind for him from an infinite spool. Little kids don't multitask, as you've surely noticed, and shoe-tying is rarely first on the agenda. "Children have a sort of strange, elastic relationship to time," is how Canadian journalist Carl Honoré explains it to me. "They have their own rhythm — and it's not at all like an adult rhythm. It kind of ebbs and flows. It defies the clock."

Honoré is not exactly speaking off the cuff here: In addition to being the father of two kids, 8 and 5, he's the author of In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed. In that book, Honoré describes a cultural epidemic of what he calls "time-sickness," the constant pressure to move faster, to get more done. With more and more kids overscheduled and "living like high-powered grown-ups," childhood — with time for play, imagination, and carefree idleness — may be its most heartbreaking casualty.

and

But how does going for a swim turn into an occasion for anxiety in the first place? I think of the German word Honoré taught me: freizeitstress, which translates as "free-time stress." Hurrying your kids through the playground, the weekend, the family vacation. We know this phenomenon all too well.

Rushing through things that are supposed to be fun...now when I stop and think about it...I'm guilty of this too...I think it has something to do with always wanting to be productive/active. Must...remember...to...RELAX and ENJOY!

You can read the whole article here. And thanks, Nancy, for the reminder.