I am so cracking up that you have left me these sweet messages about my return to blogging. It was a pathetic return...let me see: Copy, Paste. Such a journal entry along the path of my life.
This article about the busyness of these families made me tired, too. And other things. I wonder if the hours kept by these kids would be grounds for visits from social services if we weren't all, as a culture, so wrapped around the axle about turning youngsters into pint-sized over-achievers.
The lead of the story was so well done. You read about this poor guy and you think, "Man, you don't have to work this hard--the 80s are over!" Then you find out it is a kid they are talking about and you wonder what has happened to people's heads.
The no-greeting life, the predominance of physical separation (which cracked me up, as my nickname for my son is "Barnacle Boy"--I should live so long to have half an hour unaccompanied). I mean, we live in a 4,000 square foot house, but of the waking hours, we spend 90% of the time together, and in less than 20% of the house. Of course, we go to the other rooms to visit all our stuffj...but here we sit, in the family room, not even doing the same things half the time. Just being together. Our bedrooms are next door...most of the houses we looked at when we moved here 8 years ago had the master bedroom on one end of the house and the kids bedrooms on another floor or in a separate wing. Not for us, thank you. Anyway. I have spent a lot of my life feeling guilty because we don't do the sit-down dinner as a family, but we do spend a lot of time together, both in the morning and the evening--just not over a meal--and if this article is any indication, we are doing just fine. Our kid is having a childhood, and we are having a parenthood and a marriagehood and a couplehood. I like this neighborhood. My kid does, too.
A Circle of Quiet asked it well: When do people look at the clouds anymore? (Well, during math seems optimal to my son...) Who has time to dream and to reflect? To think poetically?
This was not the reason I started homeschooling--but it is a major part of the reason I stay. And it is my experience that you can't explain it to those who haven't experienced it.
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Our old rental house was less than 900 sq. ft- this one is almost 3000. We went from living in a crowded fish bowl to living in a big ol' pond.
I have to tell you, that although there are times when I really appreciate being on a different floor from my kids, there are many more times when I miss knowing that their little bodies are less than a ft away on the other side of the wall. I miss that they don't just come crawl into bed on a Sat. morning now, unless I go down and invite them to (how much of that is just growing up on their part, I am not sure). I now hear their bad dreams through the floor (fancy that- deafer than a post, but I can hear the kids whimpering on the floor below me at 2 in the am) instead of the wall.
Sigh. Can you believe people even think, let alone ask us how we can possibly spend so much time with our kids???
Have a good one,
LB, aka the drill sargent
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