Time management is a big topic of conversation here in the Single Parents blog. We seem to be constantly brainstorming ways to get more done in an average day and to do it was as little stress and pressure as possible. One of the side effects of our needing to get a great deal done in the course of a day is that we can push and pressure our children to stop wasting time and to keep up and multi-task along with us. This might seem like a reality of single parent family life, but it is not always fair or in the best interest of the child. Children do a lot of learning and growing when they appear to be doing nothing at all so when we think they are “wasting time” they may be very busy doing important things indeed…
Who among us hasn’t gotten frustrated at the seemingly endless “dawdling” and lolly-gagging that can be a child’s typical mode? I know when my children were young, just getting out the door to get to school and day care and work was a major accomplishment in moving inanimate objects. If I took the time to see things from their point of view, however, I could see that they had busy agendas of their own in the morning: when one of them was sitting by the entry door lining up shoes in graduated sizes when I wanted her to just put her shoes on—she was doing math and organizing and other higher level thinking. It wasn’t so much a purposeful wasting of time as it was that she found something that captivated her attention.
Sitting around and watching ants or doodling in a notebook may seem like time wasters to us when we are trying to get everything done, but to a child they are learning experiences. I think that children should be allowed to move at a different pace and slow down enough to experience the quiet intensities of life and we single parents may just have to adjust to allow for childhood in addition to getting everything done we need to get done.
Also: Telling Them What to do With Their Leisure Time