My kids began to thrive the minute I stopped scheduling them
It was a typical Thursday. While my seven-year-old daughter was wrapping up her chorus rehearsal, I watched as my nine-year-old, who is autistic, began to lose patience. With five minutes left to go, he snapped and took off into the street, leaving me and my toddler to push our way through the grumpy commuters to try to catch him.
Once I?d reached him and calmed him down, we walked back to the car and I remembered that we still had his trumpet lesson later that night. I offered to cancel?there was no way any of us had the bandwidth left for another activity at that point. His relief was palpable and, in that moment, I knew I needed to make a change.
In my suburban world, moms frequently brag about chauffeur duties and overscheduled exhaustion. We complain about a lack of free time but still set our alarms for 6 a.m. on registration days to sign up for activities and classes before they fill up. We spend our dinner hours at soccer practices, piano lessons and math enrichment classes. We talk about secondary school in the preschool pickup lane. We discuss college at grade-school PTA meetings. But my son?s anxiety snowballed as he grew, and now he often feels panicked unexpectedly. The fear of him melting down or running away has forced me to re-evaluate how my family spends our time outside of school. Previously, our schedule was packed with activities like taekwondo, trumpet lessons, art classes and chorus. Even my two-year-old took ballet and gymnastics on Tuesday and Thurs...
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COMPETITION: Win a 5-star Family Holiday in Limassol, Cyprus
27-04-2024 08:05 - (
moms )