Overscheduled

You know how it is when you’ve just finished up a nice Thanksgiving break, you’re looking forward to Christmas, but you’ve got to go back to work or school. If you don’t, pretend you are seven years old for a moment. My poor kid has been dreading getting out of bed and going to school these past couple of days. And I wish so badly I could let her stay home just one day and help me decorate the house, the tree, wrap presents, make cookies and all that stuff. Unfortunately when I look at our schedule, we have so little time to do any of that together, and it’s sad. Things really came to a head in my mind when I considered wrapping up some of last year’s Christmas and birthday gifts that she never took the shrink-wrap off of and giving to her again for Christmas. I mean, she never had time or inclination to play with these things and probably forgot about them, so…isn’t that pathetic?

I never planned to have an overscheduled kid. It happened without my realizing it, and now that we’re stuck – piano lessons aren’t over till June, Mandarin Chinese class goes till February, Chess Club through May, plus there’s drill team – I’m not sure the best way to deal with it other than sticking it out.

People need downtime so desperately that will find a way to get it, no matter what. In fact, people get sick (not fake sick, but really sick) in order to have time off to relax. In extreme cases, people become mentally ill or do something crazy and lose their job, their family, or whatever else is causing them to be short on down time.

We have different ways of dealing with the stress of having little time to relax and just be. Some of us learn that it’s all too easy to morph the computer work we have to do into fun, time-wasting computer time. With a click of a finger, the spreadsheet goes to the background, Facebook comes up, and two hours later you wonder why you never “have time” to read that book you wanted to read.

Kids manifest this problem in their own ways as well. Is your kid not listening to what you say and you have to repeat it four times? She’s probably in her own world because she never gets time to process or think. Is your kid refusing to do things she has to do, like homework, toothbrushing, bathing? It’s possible she just isn’t getting enough time to do relax and do the things she wants to do.

I’m not sure how I’m going to handle the 2013-14 school year, but something’s got to give. In the meantime, we’ll be struggling along, watching dinner and bath time be derailed at least two weeknights a week for practices and lessons, and hoping nobody loses her mind in the process.

It’s all in how you look at it, so I hope to just accept that things are hard right now, but that it won’t last, especially now that I know to do things differently next year.

Awesome song: