Classical U

Educating Families Classically....And Having A Good Bit of Fun

The Over-Scheduled Child

I've been revisiting this valuable parenting book and feel even more compelled to allow my children the joyous leisure of childhood.

http://www.amazon.com/Over-Scheduled-Child-Avoiding-Hyper-Parenting...

It means we get funny looks when people find out our girls aren't taking dance lessons, clarinet lessons, swimming lessons, gymnastics, soccer and girl scouts -- all at the same time.

Here is what we do have time for:

- Reading a chapter of a family book together while snuggled on the sofa every day after school.

- Unstructured play time with no purpose in mind other than fun.

- Family dinners that aren't rushed.

- Leisure Saturday morning breakfasts that everyone helps cook.

- and much more!

This is not to say that we don't have our moments when the week is busy and everyone is a bit harried, but the goal is simplicity and lots of downtime. And I realize that not every family has this perspective.

What's your family schedule like?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jesse Hake on October 25, 2011 at 11:49am

Delighted by this post! Please write more and share it as a post for the whole community that we can put up on facebook, in the Pillar Press, etc.

"Leisure" would also make a first-rate PTF meeting, Vittle Moot or Salon topic for the grown-ups at CCA. "School" is the Greek word for "leisure," and as Christians we should believe that there is nothing more important than learning how to value and spend our leisure well. Christians believe that we have a whole lot of leisure waiting for us after our resurrection and judgement by God. Also, classical educators talk a lot about how the liberal arts are supposed to teach you how to use your free time well while the servile arts (we might say vocational training) are for teaching you how to earn your bread in a responsible way. When liberal arts are taught first and taught well by those who recognize Christ's lordship over all, the liberal arts help students develop a full Christian practice and understanding of what humans are made for (to worship our Creator with our whole body, soul and mind). This is a great blessing in all of this life and the next.

Pardon the outburst! :) I'm all fired up about this not only because of my interest in classical education but also because of my reading (currently) of a potent but tiny book that several colleagues have commended to me over the years, Leisure: The Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper. (In Pieper's concern for the way in which work has become perverted within modern Western culture, he is critical of the "Calvinist work ethic" and Protestant doctrines of vocation. However, I think he fights a caricature of these things to some extent. I think that a biblical focus on worship--understood broadly as function of all creation and common grace--makes Pieper's ideas work well with Protestant convictions about vocation.)