March Break Fantasy Versus March Break Reality
March Break fantasy: The kids will wake up to a lovely (healthy) breakfast. After which they will help me tidy up, then shower, get dressed, and brush their teeth. They will be excited to attend whatever educational and yet fun activity I have planned for the day. They will have friends and sleepovers and we will bake brownies and make kale smoothies. We will play cards and do puzzles. We will even do the homework that one teacher sent home. I will not get aggravated with them. There will be no fighting about screentime because we will be too busy with all the fun stuff we have planned.
March Break reality: Kids get up before I do, they plant themselves in front of a screen and do not budge until I have flung their oatmeal at them. They do not want to go to fun and educational activity; nor do I as the thought of going to place with every other over-zealous parent and annoying child in the city makes me want to tear my hair out. Most of their friends are away so the boredom drives the kids to pick on each other for hours on end. There are no kale smoothies, but there are candy wrappers found all over the place. Where do they get the candy?! Screentime is my salvation.
The truth of March Break is somewhere in the middle. I want to make memories for my kids and be the kind of mother that does intricate crafts and shleps them around to different locations. And sometimes I am (well, not the intricate crafts part). But the memory-making is more of the small the kind: the tickle fights on the couch; making yogurt parfaits with my daughter; watching my kids make new friends on the ski hill. But I do get aggravated and there is too much screentime and junk food and squabbles.
When it comes to family time, there is no divide between quantity time and quality time. Quantity time is quality time, and also bad quality time, and somewhere-in-the-middle time. And we have had it all, just like most holidays.
What kind of March Break did you have? (Or are planning to have?)
Want more chaos? Last year, I wondered if birthing centres run by midwives were a good idea
« Vanessa Lachey Clarifies She Had Baby Blues, Not Postpartum Depression | Main | Now Swaddling Is Bad For Babies? »
