i absolutely love my 8 weeks "off" in the summer. i'm the type of person who likes a change of scenery, change of schedule, etc., to keep myself intrigued and happy. also, during the school year, i feel guilty for spending what seems like more time with other people's children, and i love to make up for this during the summer. for the first 4 weeks of july i totally love that the kid gets to come everywhere with me. there is so much to savor until i go completely insane and The Tone takes over my larnyx. i can only be needed so much, and there's a self inside me that has needs, too. many unmet needs.
for instance, i need time to walk quickly and let the world go by in a heart-pumping-faster blur. i need a little time to read actual books, sit in a coffee shop by myself, consider writing a letter, exercise. i need to learn how to sew and embroider better and pickle. i need to declutter and clean out the basement, which i've been attempting to do for a few years now. i need time to build relationships with friends, which requires some uninterrupted conversation time... to name a few things.
several weeks ago i was totally inspired by this post about "me time." it was written by a brooklyn teacher-mom who also has the summer off. and you know what she does? she chooses to send at least one child to daycare every day. isn't that audacious, in a great way? a couple years ago i may have scoffed, but not now. attachment parenting has frankly sucked the life out of me. i am torn between the worlds of incessant connection and independence, for both me and bug.
she says, "It means I can use the summer for its true teacherly purpose… that is to recover from all of the energy I have spent on other people’s children for the past ten months. Me in June is not pretty or nice. It is wiped out tired cranky old beeotch. I will not subject my kids to that."
triple uh-huh to that. now if only i could actually implement a plan of action to have more alone time than i currently get without the burden of guilt, that'd be great...
3 comments:
Hear, hear, on the alone time thing. It seems like guilt comes along with just about anything related to parenting, at least for me! I hope you can get some time to yourself to recharge before the school year starts up again.
True that. I hope we can all realize this type of balance in our lives.
in the child care business we call it "respite care?!"
i actually have been thinking a lot about how as a child care worker i am really just meeting the needs of employers (both in the present by allowing people to get to work, and in future by helping care for their future employees) not families, or communities.
i always think about this when we stay open on snow days, because we know the parents we "serve" won't get the day off and will get poop from their boss if they don't show up. i know that what would be better for the parent and the kid would be to get to stay home and enjoy a snow day not risk getting in wreck on the road to the dare care.
but i have been trying to think more generally about how child care providers and parents could be on the same team about providing care when parents need it as people, not just as employees. from a business perspective i know that parents can really only "afford" to pay for are when they are at work making money... or in NC in the case of parents with vouchers, their vouchers only technically cover the time they are working. and also from a business/child care worker perspective i don't know how you stay open all day while a parent is at work and also in the evening while a parent goes to some event. but how could we set it up from a human perspective that met our all our needs as care providers, paid and unpaid?
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