Summer is here and that means that my blogging is bound to suffer. When school is in session, I at least have 6 hours of peace and quiet every day while I try to make a living and keep up with the demands of being a single dad. But now that summer has arrived and school is out, I am like a one legged man in an ass kicking contest. Now I have to try and keep my kids occupied for those 6 hours a day. Sure...I could just let them spend all day in front of the T.V. or a Video Game, but then I would have to deal with the guilt of damaging my children's emotional and physical development.
So what is a guy to do? Well for starters, my daughter and I sat down and came up with some summer rules.
1. No electronics before noon.
2. Exercise Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
3. Music practice every day.
4. Eat fruits and vegetables every day.
5. Chores before play.
6. Try to be friendly to each other.
7. Have a great time! (that was Emma's idea)
After one week of practical application of the above rules I soon realized that in reality those rules occupy my children for a grand total of 15 minutes a day. That leaves about 11 hours and 45 minutes of "Daaaaad...I'm bored!", "Daaaaad...can we start our electronics 15 minutes early today?", "Daaaaad...I HATE DOING THE DISHES!!!", "Daaaad....can I get a gold fish?".
My next plan was to get a 3 month membership at the local rec center. This is turning out to be one of my better ideas. The rec center has an outdoor pool and now my kids are old enough to go swimming by themselves. So I can lather them up with sunscreen and drop them off for a couple of hours. And my son's best friend also has a membership, so they go down there and play racquetball and then they go jump in the pool. They spent 5 hours down there a couple days ago.
I might just make it through the summer after all. I'll throw in a week long summer day camp for my daughter, tennis lessons for my son, maybe a family trip to California and before you know it I'll be buying school supplies!
4 comments:
good call on the swimming lesson and camp. your list is great, I like high standards!
Love the idea of having some expectations, especially with electronic entertainment. I think it would be helpful for us. That, and day camp that runs all day long!
The rec center sounds great! Our son's only 4.75 yrs but I am looking forward to tht time he can be dropped off somewhere without supervision. Until then, I invest in being a social secretary to arrange for lots of play dates. I'm generous with inviting kids over to our place. Whatever effort there may be with that is easily paid back with hours of entertainment that I didn't have to invent. When our son was younger of course it meant entertaining multiple kids...but somewhere between ages 3 and 4 they started to entertain themselves and things shifted to supervision.
One additional suggestion...if the library is within bike riding distance...You may want to suggest volunteering some hours there over the summer. It's a routine, usually not too many hours, and community service is a habbit that harder to cultivate when kids are old enough to get part time jobs.
I love the idea of your summer rules. Think I'll put that on the agenda for our next Family Meeting!
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