Take time to do ... nothing

Kids have fun and parents chill out when they slow the pace of life to a crawl

LEXINGTON, KY. -- This summer, Kim Blakeman and her three kids are doing nothing. There is no camp. There are no enrichment classes. Most days, there isn't even much of a schedule.

A big decision might be whether to go to the pool where they can be pirates and sharks or to a creek where a tiny change in the current becomes a waterfall, a stick transforms into a spear and a bunch of bugs becomes a family of crickets.

"It's as much for me as it is for them," said Blakeman, watching as her children splash and squeal in the cool creek water near her Lexington home.

During the school year, Blakeman is the typical on-the-go mom, getting the kids to school and then trucking them to t-ball and dance class and cooking dinner while overseeing homework. But, she said, "it just leaves me frazzled."

During the summer, she gives herself -- and her kids -- a break.

But even taking that breather can be difficult. She feels pressure to do more than spend the day visiting grandparents or puttering around the house.

Parenting, after all, is a competitive business, said Jennifer Degler, a clinical psychologist from Lexington.

"There is just this tremendous pressure now that we need to entertain our children and keep them busy from sunup to sundown," she said. "Mothers particularly run ourselves ragged making sure that they have an interesting life."

It's also the rare involved parents who don't wonder whether they are doing enough to allow their children to get ahead in the world, she said.

Kids today have half as much free time as they did 30 years ago, notes a national study of 3,500 children 12 and younger, released by the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. One of the reasons is financial. Many families need two steady incomes to get by. Another reason? Competition.

Parenting has become "professionalized," said Bryan Carter, a pediatric psychologist and professor at the University of Louisville. Everything that parents once taught their kids -- from potty training to throwing a ball -- can now be mastered through a parenting DVD or expert training camp.

"We've kind of come to expect that experienced instruction is better," he said.

Experience is the best instruction. An argument about the rules of four square among kids is more than a squabble, he said, it's children learning to work through conflicts, work as a team and stand up for themselves.

Play is OK

Parents might be surprised what kids will pick if given the choice between some structured activity or just hanging out. Sometimes families get into a frustrating cycle -- parents sign kids up for activities because they think that's what the children want; children do the activity to please the parents, he said. Everyone is left stressed and overbooked. Often the answer is to do nothing at all.

"They work out their issues through play," she said. "It's how they learn to get along with other kids. Play is a child's work."

Don't be surprised, Carter said, if a kid who has spent most of his time in a highly structured environment doesn't immediately settle into the art of nothingness. Entertaining oneself can seem like a foreign concept if adults have always been around telling you what to do, Carter said. But a kid will catch on soon enough.

Your child who swore off Barbies in preschool as being too babyish might yet discover the joy of making mud pies.

Letting children play their way is also important. If your kids' version of hopscotch involves 46 levels and running around the mailbox three times, so be it. As long as they aren't trying to jump off the roof to test their flying ability, let them do it their way.

Cutting back

This summer, Laura Wolfrom in Versailles, Ky., has a few important goals:

A.) Getting the training wheels off 6-year-old Lily's bike.

B.) Taking long walks.

C.) Lazy afternoons in the hammock.

Wolfrom, who runs a restaurant in Midway, said she has given up Sunday brunch at her restaurant to spend more time with her daughter. It wasn't one particular event that prompted her to cut back, she said, it's just that she realized one day her baby was almost 7.

Scaling back "just seemed like the right thing," she said. As a single mother, Wolfrom wanted to be sure her daughter knew she was a priority in her mother's life.

"I think she is a much happier child when she is not on the road all of the time," she said.

Plus, Wolfrom said, she knows the day will come when grilling with mom or playing in the back-yard pool is no longer going to be cool.

"I'm fortunate that she still wants to spend time with me. I know it won't be that way for long," she said.