That was a fun one, but I found this WSJ piece more poignant... Pathetically so.

(And before growing too heartened by that chart, let's try to remember how many women nowadays build families with no loving husband at any time, but only the support of their government.)

I did day camp every summer, but it was mostly because my parents both worked and I needed something to do during the day. My parents never worried my brain would turn to Wheatina without constant enrichment, so I never felt the pressure I've seen kids today under. Of course, I read without being forced and could amuse myself with little parental intervention, so I didn't need to be shepherded from place to place to keep me from staring at the wall all day. But I still want to tell parents to chill the fuck out. Your stress about your kids' enrichment only makes them stressed, too. If you schedule every moment, they won't know how to fill the time themselves. Being able to handle downtime is an important part of growing up.

Summer is two and a half months, plenty of time for both.

The deepest wisdom we'll ever hear from Davos:

"People on average live a quarter of their lives as children. That's a lot," Mr. Summers said. "It's important that they be as happy as possible during those 18 years. That counts too."

There is a rational midpoint between Amy Chua style tiger parenting and allowing your children to become vegetables over the summer. I would like to think I am at that place with my two kids.

I was born in the late 50s and my parents are still married. Fifty-six years last Saturday. My brothers and I had paper routes, so even though we were out of school, we still had that responsibility until my, what? sophomore year of high school was when our route got bought out, I think. By the time I graduated in '75, I was a bona fide rock-concert-going-pot-smokin' hippie, but I always had a job - waitressing, factory work, office work, whatever I could get and keep for as long as possible. I changed jobs a lot when I was young, looking for the right balance of responsibility vs. freedom and the coin to do the things I wanted to do. When I was younger, summertime was spent going to the beach (after the papers were delivered), hanging out, going to friends' houses, partying and generally trying to have fun. We didn't have summer reading lists (although I was always a reader, so that wasn't an issue), or math packets that had to be completed and turned in the first day of school like kids today do. I wasn't in marching band, so I didn't go to band camp the last week of summer before school, like my girls did (and the younger still does). It's so different today, and I'm still not sure if that's a good thing.

Crid, this woman, in the comments of the first WSJ piece you posted, was wise:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303544604576430341393583056.html?mod=iGoogle#articleTabs%3Dcomments%26commentId%3D2732038

kim erickson wrote:

I'm Generation X myself. I'm 42 years old with a 5 and a 7 year old and I have a great marriage. There have been moments, weeks, months of discontent and near-abject misery but I've never considered divorce. My parents have been married since 1961, my husband's since 1963. Both couples are still married and, in the case of my parents, it has not always been a bed of roses. Sometimes it was downright awful but they stayed together. I wish that people could understand that they won't always be happy with their spouse. Sometimes you might be miserable.

Marriages can be cyclical. Marriage is a social and legal contract. Marriage is not designed as a vehicle for personal happiness. My husband is not my everything. We're happy together and love spending time with each other but neither of us expects the other to make us happy. We let the small things go. The writer of this article was upset that her husband didn't read something she wrote. My position on that would be "who cares if he reads it or not?" Seriously, the partners in a marriage don't exist to validate each other. Each person has their own agenda and you need to respect that and give it space. I write and my husband doesn't want to read my writing and I couldn't care less. My husband has a hobby that I have no interest in. He doesn't even expect me to feign an interest. I feel like people expect too much from their marriages and their spouses.

People with young children especially need to cut a lot of slack while they wade throught the labor intensive muck of dealing with small children but also need to find ways to reconnect. It's not all about the kids. Your kids will be better off if you put them aside quite a bit to be with each other. Every night our kids go to bed by 8 so we can have Mommy and Daddy time. If our daughter wants to stay up and read she can, but she needs to leave us alone. I guess we're old fashioned in that we put the marriage first and the kids second and neither of us expects the spouse to be our best friend.

And this is right on:

"People on average live a quarter of their lives as children. That's a lot," Mr. Summers said. "It's important that they be as happy as possible during those 18 years. That counts too."

My parents are still together -- and have been together 45 years.

"Go outside and play. Come home when the street lights come on."

My parents complained we read too much. TV was boring, no variety with just three channels.

I think, if they knew what I was reading, my parents would have taken a more proactive approach. When I was 9, under my stack of Choose Your Own Adventure and Sweet Valley Twins books was a copy of "Flowers in the Attic." Fortunately, there was also "A Brief History of Time."

The library was great. Unlike the movies, where you had to be sneaky to get into the R- and X-rated stuff, you could check out anything and no one asked any questions.

My parents have been together 42 years and tolerate each other. I've never seen them kiss or hug even once. Seen plenty of fights though. Ain't life grand?

I did day camp every summer, but it was mostly because my parents both worked and I needed something to do during the day. My parents never worried my brain would turn to Wheatina without constant enrichment, so I never felt the pressure I've seen kids today under. Of course, I read without being forced and could amuse myself with little parental intervention, so I didn't need to be shepherded from place to place to keep me from staring at the wall all day. But I still want to tell parents to chill the fuck out. Your stress about your kids' enrichment only makes them stressed, too. If you schedule every moment, they won't know how to fill the time themselves. Being able to handle downtime is an important part of growing up.

Posted by: NumberSix at August 21, 2011 11:17 PM

Assuming we're talking about the 1970s or earlier, let's remember things are different now.

As MarkD hinted below, "screen time" wasn't nearly as much of a time-consumer or threat to kids' health or brains back then, simply because there was so little variety. In other words, if kids managed to spend 2 or 3 hours a day on TV, parents didn't worry so much as now because they knew the kids would soon come to realize that most of TV was predictable and boring and would happily move on to other activities with little or no pressure from parents. (I.e., video games weren't exactly a big temptation in the 1970s.)

However, NOWADAYS, most(?) kids would be horrified and outraged at the idea of parents' limiting kids' screen time to only 2 hours a day, because you have TV, endless video games, Twitter, etc. How horribly cruel can you get, they cry? Why don't parents realize that EVERY form of screen entertainment deserves at least two hours of worship per day (making a total of 8 or 10), if only because fast-paced entertainment "feels better" than reading or exercise? Besides, since the social scene is so tied up in screen time, how can adults fail to see that a child will NEVER have friends unless the child is allowed to be one of the druggie sheep? (One response might be that we don't call it deprivation when we only allow a kid one sugary dessert per WEEK, despite the hundreds of different junk foods that are available, so what's the difference?)

Not to mention that you can't just toss kids outside to play these days - NOT because of the grossly exaggerated threat of kidnappers or molesters, but because in all likelihood, the kids will simply find friends already outdoors......carrying video games, so they'll just hide somewhere and get fat, same as indoors. Yes, good kids should be able to stand up to temptation, but there's only so much they can be expected to handle without parental intervention.

(I remember some TIME Magazine parenting story from years back in which the parents joked about needing to find Amish families for their children to spend time with, since they despaired of keeping their kids away from materialism in general.)

My daughter just went off to her senior year of high school this morning. She's in all AP classes.

I pretty much let my kids play on their summer breaks. Summer is shorter than ever anyway. They get out in June and go back mid Aug, which is very different from the end of May - after Labor Day summers we had.

Plus I don't think you can necessarily "enrich" your kids by telling him what to learn. Play is learning for kids too. My kids learned to fish, handle boats, and they read about things that interested them, rather than it being "required". I think summers should be about letting them have the freedom to explore their own interests, which they don't get the rest of the year.

"As MarkD hinted below, "screen time" wasn't nearly as much of a time-consumer or threat to kids' health or brains back then, simply because there was so little variety."

Yes, but what so many parents fail to see is that kids go through phases. My son was practically glued to the computer when he was 13 or so. He played video games non-stop.

I let him. Later, around 16, he wanted to learn to fly, so we let him take lessons. His instructor allowed him to solo after only 9 hrs of instruction because, as it turned out, he'd been been using all that "screen time" flying simulators. He knew exactly how to fly without ever being in a plane!

Now, at 21, he's an experienced pilot, divemaster, and boat captain, and his interests are totally away from the computer. I'm not sure he even has one anymore.

So, I think parents freak out too much. They think anything their kid does at 12 is predictive of what they'll be doing at 16 and/or the rest of their lives, but that's not usually true. Whatever they seem "obsessed' with now, they'll probably grow out of, or, better yet, find a way to turn into a productive passion.

Plus, screen time is the new way of learning, and, as long a it's not violent, it may be very enriching.

I meet lots of hyperactive overachieving grasping yuppies in my line of work and, to a person, they had 4.0+ school averages, hold offices in a number of charities, run around at 90 miles an hour doing everything at once, and to a person are the most boring, self-absorbed twits you'd ever want to meet.

I blame their hyperactive overachieving grasping yuppie parents for destroying their childhoods and creating humorless, greedy, boring young adults.

For f's sake, send your kids out for a summer of kid-sized adventures so they'll have fond memories to help them in the future instead of just a matching dinette set and a monthly BMW payment.

NumberSix wrote:

If you schedule every moment, they won't know how to fill the time themselves. Being able to handle downtime is an important part of growing up.

Totally. A couple years ago, I ran an after-school journalism program for teenagers. And these kids were outrageously over-scheduled. One might think (and I'm sure their parents did think) that balancing a ton of activities would improve their time management skills. Instead, it did the opposite.

When they were unable to complete their assignments or fulfill their obligations, they simply made excuses about being too busy -- and they were!

These kids were utterly incapable of prioritizing and lacked the most basic organization skills.

I did both. School ended around June 20th, camp started around June 25 through July. I went to some awesome camps, art camp, nerd camp (which was school lite... we did things like make videos, program logo games, start sandwich stands, etc), and then usually 2-3 weeks of travel in August. So there were a good couple weeks of down time in addition to camp and travel. Plus camp got out at 3 so afternoons were spent running around with the girl next door.

Doesn't have to be either/or.

Sofar, sounds like they WERE able to prioritize... just that journalism wasn't the priority.

@NicoleK: Being able to prioritize means removing some things from your schedule so that you can deal with more important things -- so, yeah, I'd say that taking on another activity (which was totally optional, btw) when your schedule is full and then doing poorly shows an inability to prioritize.

I was a busy kid, too. Showed up at school at 6 am for orchestra, did tennis after school, lots of AP classes. Was in a musical group, too, with my friends, and we made money by playing weddings. Also did summer camp. But, when I started to get stressed, my parents told me to stop whining and eliminate an activity (I didn't sign up for tennis the next year) rather than let anyone down. The lesson: saying you'll do something and then actually doing it well is a hugely important life skill. It's more important than a laundry list of activities on a college application.

"The money is sorely needed: She recently learned she is pregnant with her third child."

Crid, both the stories you have linked on this thread are going to give me nightmares tonight.

Any guesses, Crid, as to what Jazz and Unique's younger sibling's name might be?

Meant to link that through the tweet whence it came to me... That's the garlic the pulls all the other flavors together.

As someone mentioned before, it's hard to let the summer go by with no additional educational stimulation. My goal for the summer is to get him to be consistent with learning, as to not lose what he learned the year before. Luckily, my son likes educational workbooks and will do them willingly. He doesn't watch television, except Saturday mornings, and will play video games as awards for good behavior or when I just need a break.

I regularly try putting him into after school activities, but with me working a full-time job, we may not always have the time to complete his homework, get enough sleep, and do the activity. If his attitude suffers because we're too busy, we drop an activity. I wish my son was as motivated as his friend, who at 6, has a brown belt because he's in the gym/studio? 3 days a week - willingly. But his mother is able to work with him after school, so he has additional hours in the day to make sure that everything's taken care of. We have to prioritize. Sitting down to dinner is more important than the swim team or the dance class.

I also agree with the commenter on the article posted. I don't rely on my husband to be my best friend, my everything. There are often times that he tunes out when I talk, because I've discussed it for the 12th time. I watch his interest disappear, and I shut up and pick up the phone. He's there to support me and me him, but that doesn't mean that I care to watch and follow every soccer team he does. I enjoy listening to him describe his job, but I can barely articulate what he does back to you.

Where does this conviction come that certain activities must be heavily moderated?

That aside, it is not possibile that the worship of childhood and the insistance that childhood must be a period of planned innocence actually encourage single-minded activities?

I grew up in the 60s and 70s. I maintain that we were the last generation to experience true freedeom as children. Heck, we could even pick up Playboys off the magazine racks. (My ex-wife remembers buying smokes and beer for her mom at the corner convenience store.)

In the summer, the rule for almost the entire neighborhood was that you had to check in home at dinner. Other than that, anything goes and that was very true. We did things that would make modern societal nannyies catatonic. But here's the thing; we learned about life. We self-organized games, we built our own explosive, er, entertainment devices--the point being that we made plans and executed those plans and tried again. (In one case, we discovered that our pipe bombs made better rockets and so switched goals.)

Here's the point; we live in a society where older people lie to children and TELL them they can do anything. I came from a generation where we were a bit more realistic, but actually DID things and pushed limits and find out for ourselves what we could and couldn't do. And had a blast doing it.

(I also came from a time that when you raced your go kart around city streets and the cops caught you, they hauled your ass to your parents and didn't otherwise make a big scene about it.)

BTW, NikkiG, be wary of the "motivated" friend of your son. I was somewhat "motivated" in music in Junior High and High School, but actually loathed it beyond belief and did it because my parents "motivated" me (there was no, do this or else, it was simply do this--for all our freedom elsewhere in life, it's amazing how insistant my mother was about music, especially considering how little musical talent half of us siblings have. On other other hand, I can read music and tell you if someone is in key. Still, I would have preferred photography as the art hobby.)

"The money is sorely needed: She recently learned she is pregnant with her third child."

From a February 2000 Salon article "A ghetto mom talks back"

http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2000/02/25/james_traub/index.html

"Each day, I remember that I had a chance to buy my son a one-way ticket to the middle class. Yes, you can change mothers -- if you do it at birth. Many of us who became pregnant when we were single and without resources considered adoption, at least briefly. I could have given my son up. By definition, every couple seeking to adopt in America is middle class or better -- sometimes very much better -- since only middle-class couples can pass an agency's screening or afford a private adoption."

"The cost of that ticket was that I would never see my son again. I would never know what happened to him. I thought the price was too high. In any case, I was unable to pay it. Anyway, I thought, using the classic flawed reasoning of desperate women, I loved my son and that meant he would be OK. Right? Love would conquer all."

"Fourteen years later I believe, on most days, that I made the wrong choice. I see the evidence in front of my eyes. ... I love my son. But by choosing to keep him, I have greatly circumscribed his chances to succeed -- or even to survive -- in life."

"Not because I have squashed his curiosity, or because he is not doing well in school. (He is.) Because he is poor. Because poverty hurts children, period, no matter what else they are born with -- or however much they are loved."

...

"What my son hasn't got because he is poor is social capital: The 'strong social bonds, social networks' which come from 'the support of a strong community.'"

"...No amount of intellectual stimulation can make up for not having social capital, and without it, even smart children don't have much of a chance. Social capital is the network of privilege and mastery that middle-class people take for granted. It is connections. It is the safety net that lets you fall and get back up. It is the family who covers for you, the friend who gets you into school or offers a lead on a job, the someone who knows someone who can get you an apartment."

"My son doesn't have any family but me. More than that, he doesn't have any other adult role models, male or female, who can teach him what I don't know -- how to find a place in the world. He doesn't know a single adult who works. 'How do you get a job?' he asks. I can't answer that question to save my life. 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' people ask him. He answers 'I don't know.'"

"I want to cry, because I have taught my son a lesson that most middle-class children never have to learn: It is possible to grow up to be nothing at all. It's not just that he doesn't have any idea of what kind of jobs are out there -- even if he did, he wouldn't dare to want one. He lacks the confidence that he can get what he wants and what he needs. You're either born into that kind of confidence, or you're not."

"Moreover, social capital trumps human capital every time. Read the...New York Times Magazine for any amount of time, and you'll see periodic stories about the tricks middle-class parents will resort to, and the money they must spend -- to get their 4-year-old into private school, or their teenager's SAT scores up to snuff -- when the human capital the kid has accumulated just isn't sufficient to guarantee he doesn't fall out of the class he was born into."

Sorry, italicizing error in last paragraph. Should read:

"Moreover, social capital trumps human capital every time. Read the...New York Times Magazine for any amount of time, and you'll see periodic stories about the tricks middle-class parents will resort to, and the money they must spend -- to get their 4-year-old into private school, or their teenager's SAT scores up to snuff -- when the human capital the kid has accumulated just isn't sufficient to guarantee he doesn't fall out of the class he was born into."

I know hw that woman can save money

1. unplug the freezer when it is empty
2. rather than pay extra for extra heat, wear more clothes
3. stop having more kids without a father around
4. in the event she gets a man still dont have more kids

People like to make generalizations about the generations, but there is divide within also.

As a Gen X guy, I can say that Gen Xers with Boomer parents are very different from Xers with Silent Generation parents.

In the summer, the rule for almost the entire neighborhood was that you had to check in home at dinner.

Yeah, I remember being part of a roving band of kids when I was young. We were in a pretty rural area, and we'd roam among our yards, fields, etc, and get pretty creative to entertain ourselves.

Those roving bands of kids seem to have disappeared.

Assuming we're talking about the 1970s or earlier, let's remember things are different now.

It was the early 1990s and I had quite a lot of "screen time." Not video games, but I watched TV and videos. If my parents thought I was spending too much time on the couch, they'd tell me to go outside and play with my friends or they'd take me somewhere for an activity. The thing was that I was never terribly scheduled. Even the camps were fairly relaxed: an hour at the pool, then an hour for crafts, then lunch, then an hour playing kickball or softball or something. Like others have said, there is a way to give your kids things to do without scheduling every minute for fear they'll turn into zucchini.

Things are different now, though, in other respects. I think my contemporaries and I were right on the edge of when helicopter parenting came into the forefront. It never seemed like my friends were herded from one activity to the next, but slightly younger kids were.

A ghetto mom speaks back.

Hmpf...OK...why would I want to hear what someone without the sense that even ancient hunter gatherer tribes had...has to say?

If you're living in the ghetto, chances are its not because that is just the best place to be. Anyone that watches t.v. knows there are better circumstances to live in. It shouldn't take that much smarts to realize that the $3.00 box of condoms with 97% effectiveness is a helluva lot cheaper than being a single mom for 18 years, even if a number of those years are spent waiting for the kid to get out of juvenile hall.

...the money is sorely needed, she's pregnant with her third child...
Those two parts do NOT belong in the same sentence.

Ancient peoples had numerous controls in place to ensure that they could feed the numbers that they had within their little tribes.

These included taboos on sex with nursing mothers, restricted sexual access and enforced periods of abstinence, certain locales had plant life that functioned as a form of birth control. Extended nursing for children to extend a period of infertility. And unfortunately, outright infanticide.

The point is that ancient peoples with no modern education of any kind new well enough that you didn't want to have a larger population or family than you could support on the food you could acquire, and certainly not a larger family than you could take from one food source to the next.

What the hell happened to that simple reasoning within poor communities. "Gee, I'm pregnant, I need more money." It should be, "I don't have more money, so I shouldn't get pregnant."

It galls me beyond measure that once I'm rich, the fortune I studied my ass off, risked my future, and spent years of blood and sweat and brain cells dying of boredom to master the details of doing business, in order to build....will see nasty chunks taken away, and given to people who can't figure out that you shouldn't have kids you can't fucking FEED!

I'm 44. I never was "enriched" during the summer. I never was one for tv so that wasn't an issue. My brother watched it all the time but I could not be bothered. I played with our dogs, my friends, I rode my bike all over. I stayed at friend's houses. I learned to cook. I made forts in the woods behind our house. I camped out under the starts on our deck. I read a gazillion books. I had a rich imagination and could play for hours with my Breyer plastic horses. By middle school I had my own horse and spent all my time at the barn.

My boy is 17 and just getting ready to start his senior year of high school. His summer so far has consisted of working as a staffer at a cub scout camp for 6-10 year old boys (3 weeks worth). Then we went to boy scout camp for a week. It was great. Since returning from camp he has worked on his car (which he bought a few months ago at a garage sale for $550 of his own money). We went backpacking for a couple nights. He has cut, split and stacked a metric craploadtonne of firewood. We needed some trees to come down and I told him he could sell the wood for firewood and keep the money. It will be about 10 cords of wood when he's all done (around $2200 worth of firewood). He made a machete. Umm yeah. Then he chopped blackberry brambles. He bought a weedwhacker at Sears and has been trimming the whole neighborhood for spending money. He loves that machine. He completed an online English course through BYU independent study. He's read some books, done some social networking, been his grandma's yard and garden minion, played with our new puppy, gone to the creek that runs through our back pasture and done who-knows-what, helped with the housekeeping aaaaand stripped his room of "boy" toys like Legos so he can sell them to pay for his "man" toys. Oh yeah, he was a volunteer cowboy at the handicap kids rodeo. He helps the kids succeed in the events by giving them as much help as they need. And he's spent a lot of time riding his bike around.

We still have a parade, and another backpacking trip in the next couple of weeks.

He's a bit hyper so he manages to keep himself busy. His choice.

Oh, my enriching my kid consists of yelling out the door for him to put on eye protection while he's splitting wood and admiring his hand-carved machete handle while commenting it might need sanding. Everything else is on him.

I did fine on my own until about age 13, when I spent an entire summer watching TV and eating pizza, with predictable results. I think if my mother had been around, she would have got me out of there.

"Fortunately, there was also 'A Brief History of Time.'"

At the age of 9? Damn.

Oops. I lie. I did enrich my child today. I gave him a brand spankin new Rutherford B. Hayes dollar coin I got at the bank today.

Conan, that article is interesting. It makes me think of my neighbor, who fosters infants. The babies she takes care of have parents who do not want to give them up for adoption but are unfit. The babies stay with her until they go back to the parents or the parental rights are terminated and they get adopted. She took care of one little boy for almost two years before his mom was deemed sober enough to take him. My neighbor loves this little boy like he is hers, and she and her family help his mother every week. She is like a very involved godparent, and I really think his life will be OK because of her, in a way it would not be if his mother were unsupported.

Given that the finality of adoption seems to be influenced the author's choice, I wish my neighbor's situation could work for more babies born to poor moms.

I swear I don't think my son had read one book this summer but he learned a lot; he learned how to swim (finally!!), he learned to fish, how to light a proper campfire, how to use a "real" knife--the last 2 with reasonable supervision. We both do work though, so we found him an awesome daycamp that takes him to pools, lakes, sporting events, and playgrounds. He a shade lighter than BROWN at this point (we are white people) and so am I. I think it was a great summer!! I'm sad to see it end.

I've finally found one of my twins' currency-taking away her books. That's the only threat that works for me. I may be the only parent in the country to have to tell my kids to stop reading and go do something. Not outdoors, of course. Can't be outdoors when it's 109 for 2 months straight....

We did VBS twice. And just got back from a 3 week tour o' the southeast vacation. But nothing officially "enriching". Well, unless the Wright brother's museum at Kittyhawk, and the Lost Colony at Roanoke, and museums, and aquariums are enriching. Okay, I'm a parent that enriches. But not on a schedule! And not in an unfun way.

My kids wouldn't watch tv all day if I wanted them too. And there are days I do want them too! They watch some, and get up and wander away.

And I'm rather proud to say their fav part of the vacation was the day we spent wading in a creek in the smokeys. Not on single request to go to a tourist ripoff in god-awful pigeon forge on the way through!

I've finally found one of my twins' currency-taking away her books. That's the only threat that works for me.

That was my parents' punishment of choice, too. It was really the only thing that worked for me, since I had no problem doing chores and could entertain myself in my head when sent to my room. But no extracurricular reading was a fate worse than death when I was little. And, well, now. The worst punishment I remember was when I was seven or eight and I had to stop smack in the middle of one of the Chronicles of Narnia.

Your second post made me smile, too, because I used to stay in a chalet outside Gatlinburg every year and the one time my parents caved and stopped in Pigeon Forge (you can pan for real gold!), I remember thinking, "Well, this blows."