Today is the last day of school for my children. A day that always fills me with nostalgia and relief. A day when I realise just how quickly time is speeding by. A day that makes me wonder where the school year has gone.
A day that makes me think about all those nights we worried about whether our children were applying themselves as much as they could. About whether we had instilled the right values in them so they would be able to apply themselves at school. About whether they were in the right schools. And then just like that the school year is over. Done. Summer has begun in full for them.
Then the worry of how we will occupy their long ten weeks of holiday so that they can have fun but not spend the whole vacation in front of a television or on their computers begins. Wondering where they can best explore who they are and who they are becoming and how we can help them manifest it.
Thinking about the lack of freedom they have now compared to the days when the summer holidays meant long days of freedom for me when I was a child. When I left the house in the morning and sometimes didn’t return until night fall. And my parents had no idea where I was, who I was with or what I was doing. And they didn’t worry either. They just wanted me outside. Out of their hair. And so did I want to be out of theirs. Free to explore and be whomever I wanted to be. No restrictions. And I loved it. Craved it.
I remember lying in the grass and looking up at the passing clouds thinking about life. Contemplating my place in it. Sometimes bored beyond tears about the long dragging days. Other times happy that I could lie in the grass. With no one bothering me. Where I could look at the clouds and make up shapes in them. Where my brain wasn’t working overtime. Where I could get up late and not be rushed to get to any camps or summer activities. My summer activity was purely to be a child and have fun.
But when I think about my children’s lives and the expectations that are on them to be the best, I cringe. I think with sadness about how times have changed now. I think regretfully that there is no way my children can roam as freely. How now we have to know where they are, who they are with and know what they are doing. How now we plot out their summers to put them in the right summer camps. Afraid that if we don’t they will fall behind their peers. Or get into trouble because they are bored. Or they will end up with Attention Deficit because they spend too much time in front of the TV or on their computers.
How did we let our society change so much from a time when summer holiday meant freedom, roaming, exploring on our own to being policed and restricted? In less than my lifetime. How did we let this happen?
So school ends today and summer camps begin next week. From one structured environment to another our children go. When do we allow them the time to just be? To figure out who they are and what they want to be. When do we let their minds roam so they can explore all they want to be without structure? When do we let them make their own decisions so they know how when they mature? When do we let them lie in the grass and contemplate their lives?
I worry sometimes about whether my children will be able to live their lives as adults making their own decisions if I keep them so structured. So restricted. When will we learn to just let them go? Let them be so they can roam free? And become responsible by falling sometimes. By making mistakes. By making their own decisions without us interfering. I hope my children get some time over their holidays to be free. I really do even if it’s for a short time. To lie in the grass and look at the clouds and not their watches. To make their own time and not someone else’s.
Remembering just like this school year flew by so are their days as children, tweens, teens , young adults and soon they will be us and we will be gone. Hoping they learn to be adults along the way.
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