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Swimming in Time and Process


After a day of visiting the most amazing families and a few quick shopping trips, I'm loving summer!!  It is a great time of year for kids.

 Water toys and swimming suits and sunscreen fill the aisles of the local stores.  Parents, Grandparents and providers filled the park with squeals of delight and squeaky swings!  Baseball, softball and soccer fields are full. Gardens are putting down contented roots.

 Please forgive me for a little rant about my opinion on quality and quantity time as the summer begins.   As a young Mom, I heard all about Quality time while I was wading through the daily routine of stay at home Mom and child care provider.

  I would wearily smile and pick up the living room for the thousandth time OF THE DAY!  Did I provide 10 minutes of continual quality pre-academic or focused reading?  Were my kids and the kids I watched sitting in a circle while I endowed them with my expertise?  Did they have my absolute and undivided individual attention for hours a day?

 Scheduled quality time?  I looked sheepishly at the calendar on my refrigerator next to the house rules and chores and beautiful peaces of art.  Did I do laundry, yard work and dishes within living with my children each day?  My scheduled looked like this:

 Wake Up
Eat Breakfast
Play Time -Outside
Nap for Babies
Play Time/Chore Time
Lunch
Nap Time
Play/Chore Time -Outside
Supper Time
Bath Time
Quiet Play/Reading Time

 As a young Mom, I second guessed myself ALL THE TIME.  So is it quality to ask the kids to put away the silverware with me or pull weeds and garden and fold towels or help me paint?  How awful was it that while my kids did art and/or homework that I did my reading and homework?

 I wonder would the experts would say when my boys made stick guns and had horse apple (poop) wars?

 Mud, dirt, play, work and structured chaos was more my operating procedure for the day.

 Our culture wants to neatly define separate areas of our life.  Quality is one time.  Work is another.  Teaching and learning.  Spiritual life and learning.

 Families (and individuals) get the impression that in order to be a "good" parent that we have to stop at the door of one activity to change into another selves and step into another role. 


Like a giant puzzle, we separate the aspects of family and life.

 That is CRAZY!  We are whole families filled with whole people.  Whole children learning to work, play, grow, learn and live in one big messy swimming pool of life.

 Relationships are built in this amazing soup of time and real life.  Working, playing, learning and growing together is a process.  Relationships have to be constantly fed time and energy or they will die.

 My wisdom from 22 years of motherhood and working with and being taught by gobs of families and children and 42 years of life is....... INSANELY SIMPLE.

 Jump in the pool of life and swim in time and love the process of building and building and building relationships and connections with those you love.


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