Parents who give their kids "quality time" aren't giving them much. The children usually get no more than two hours in close physical proximity to one or both parents.
The youngest receive the most time and attention, and the oldest receive the least.
During these periods of planned togetherness, activities that require communication are preferable, but easier activities like watching television are acceptable. Where's the quality in that?
I've just spent a weekend with a family that could care less about dollops of quality time. They are brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, mothers and fathers, grandparents and grandchildren, husbands and wives, dog and cat. From the youngest to the oldest, they embrace each other, their friends. They give their time, themselves. There's quality.
Now how about a diatribe about play dates? My guts turn inside out every time I hear that term. What ever happened to kids just playing together and working out all the terms and conditions by their own rules? I can't imagine a play date back in the 50s. Time for a quote.
ReplyDeleteA childhood in which children are not allowed to occupy their own world of self-inflicted danger and subversive behavior and minor criminal activity for at least several glorious hours a day is in some way not a childhood at all.
Michael Kelly
Editorial The Atlantic Monthly
April 2001