Home > Critic-At-Large > Summer Break

Summer Break

By Chris Colcord

Fort Wayne Reader

2018-06-14

One bad thing about being the parent of a new-born child is that you have absolutely no sense of perspective; even after eight or nine months, you're still not aware that your friends would rather jump off a suspension bridge than hear another one of your cute, boring stories about your kid's wholly predictable, incremental progress. It's one of those "blameless" social crimes — you can't really fault your friends for wanting to avoid you and your deadening, pointless tales, but you can't crush new parents for being a tad one-dimensional in their conversation topics, either. It's why I've always thought that having two parents was optimal; not to preserve some arcane notion of social order or patriarchy, but just to keep from boring innocent people, excessively. When my wife would come home from work, I couldn't wait to fill in the details of my action-packed day with our new-born daughter, and she was the perfect audience: she wanted to hear about every last moment. Which was beautifully symmetric, for there simply wasn't another on the planet who would willingly endure all that.

As our (two, now) daughters have grown, I'm realizing that that paradigm hasn't changed that much — your friends and family still aren't too interested in hearing every charming anecdote. A brief overview is usually, dutifully, inquired on — "Everybody doing well?" "Yes" — but after that, nobody's really that keen on hearing about that wacky moment with the turtle and the Argyle socks and the Jehovah's Witness. You can save that for Facebook, for that ancient Aunt who lives for things like this (though, come to think of it, she's really not your Aunt, though everybody calls her that.) And then, maybe you shouldn't sell Auntie too short; maybe she'll be bored by the story, too.

So I know I'm about to violate my own code about appropriate social discourse by talking about my kids, but I'm afraid this Summer has been a little eye-opening for me and my children, so you're just going to have bear with me. I didn't realize that in 2018, my wife and I are just about the only parents in our school district who don't have any enrichment classes or camps or organized activities lined up for our kids to keep them on track during Summer. Like: the only ones. It's weird. I expected there'd be a few like-minded parents like us, deadbeats or hippies or short-sighted folks who always miss camp payment deadlines, but I was dead wrong. Everybody else is on track, dialed in, not about to let all the progress made in Pre-K slide away before the rigors of Kindergarten kick in. Best to be pro-active, I guess, or else your kid will never get into Princeton in 2030. Summer's here and the time is right to learn Mandarin. And go dancing in the streets, too, for those Broadway Baby Camps sure are popular this year.

Maybe I'll regret the improvisational nature of my kids 2018 Summer at some point, and maybe I'll discover that there are some benefits in future years to actually signing my kids up for week-long activities that they'll probably get a big kick out of. I can see it; I'm a stubborn guy, but I'm not that stubborn. If the time is right, I'm sure I'll be amenable to matching the right activity with the right kid. But that time isn't now.
Maybe I'm over-compensating, but I continue to be amazed at how over-booked and over-supervised kids' lives are. It's the way things are now, and it's not just teenagers getting the boot-camp treatment — even elementary school kids are locked-in to schedules that would exhaust a first-year lawyer. I read a medical article on stress and children and the article recommended that children should have two hours of unsupervised time, per day, for mental health. And I thought, Good Lord: my kids get about 24 hours or unsupervised time per day. Two hours? I can't believe how terrified parents get that their children will be bored at some point, as if being bored was just about the worst thing that could happen to a kid. It isn't; it's great. Being bored forces you to use your imagination, and kids love that. It's freeing. Builds confidence. Like most indulgent parents, we have closets jammed with out-of-favor toys, and yet my daughters are constantly finding sticks in the yard that they shred the bark from and then beat each other with. It's a point of pride that we usually have the most imaginative kids in the entire lobby of the ER.

It's funny, my youngest daughter is autistic and really thrives having routines, and yet I still don't want to sign her up for anything this Summer, though there are programs designed for kids with special needs. Some of this is practicality — by the time she would finally settle into the routine at the class, the week would be over--but I've also learned how to incorporate some structure in the midst of our devil-may-care existence. And it's something I'm learning about autistic kids — every one of them needs a unique behavioral plan. You can learn some general patterns about autism, but in day-to-day life, you just have to tailor what you've learned to fit this very specific person. And it's not terribly dissimilar to the mindset when you take care of a newborn, either — in both cases, you're trying to anticipate needs for someone who can't really articulate what they need. It's like a code, and I feel I can learn more about what my daughter needs just by hanging out with her this Summer.

Which makes me sound like a prince, but really, my dad-of-the-year pose doesn't explain my antipathy towards Summer programs. I just hate them; irrationally, completely, indisputably. And I know it's an exaggeration to believe that parents would like their kids to be completely devoid of spontaneity, but . . . I think parents would like their kids to be completely devoid of spontaneity. Princeton in 2030, and all that. I know I'm an old guy with old guy attitudes and while I certainly don't get weepy about some fake, Norman Rockwell "American Summer" idyll with lemonade on the porch and daisies in the yard and frogs in the pond, I do think parents need to back off a bit. Let 'em have Summer. Forget Mandarin. Get bored.