L
If you like this, check out www.rosemond.com. He's suggested before
that if parents really care about having enough family time (which can
include teaching useful things like cooking, of course) they should
allow children no more than one extra-curricular activity.
Lenona.
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/living/17294077.htm
By John Rosemond
McClatchy Newspapers
Culture is preserved by parents who pass commonly held customs along
to their children. For generations, one such preserving custom was the
picnic. When my wife and I were kids, the picnic was a fairly regular
good-weather ritual for our respective families. These mini-vacations
were usually located far outside the city limits, in a state park or
even just at one of the many roadside picnic tables (with charcoal
grill and sometimes even a horseshoe pit) that used to dot the
American landscape. As parents, we passed the joys of picnicking on to
our kids.
I'm now aware that this cultural preservative is in danger of going
the way of the drive-in theater, another old-fashioned thing families
once got excited about, especially when Dad and Mom hid the kids in
the trunk so they wouldn't have to pay as much to get in.
For those of you who are too young to know what a picnic is, or was,
here's a brief synopsis: The parents pack a lunch of yummy albeit
unhealthy stuff like fried chicken and potato salad and really salty
pickles and various canned carbonated chemicals, and then everyone
gets in the car and travels to a shady spot in the country, away from
the hustle and bustle of city life. When a suitable spot is found, a
tablecloth is laid out on the ground or spread over a public picnic
table, the food is placed upon it, and everyone eats while commenting
on the beauty of nature. Before and after the meal, family members
take walks, throw Frisbees, play guitars and sing, or maybe just lie
back on a blanket and sleep and get a sunburned face.
It wasn't exciting, no, and that was the very idea behind a picnic. It
was an opportunity for the family to tone down their daily lives, get
away from it all, and just relax and enjoy one another's company.
Unfortunately, in these hurry-up-we-gotta-go times, organized after-
school and weekend activities like soccer have replaced relaxing
activities like the family picnic. That's too bad, because watching a
child play a sport and yelling your head off while he does is not a
family activity, nor is it especially relaxing. Yelling and relaxed do
not compute.
Today's families, more than ever, need to relax and spend relaxing
times together where there are no scores or goals or rules, which is
why I am calling for a national movement to bring back the picnic. I'm
calling it, appropriately enough, "Bring Back the Family Picnic!" If
that means taking your kids out of organized after-school sports and
the like, I say do it! Go on a picnic every good-weather weekend and
play Frisbee! After all, Frisbee probably exercises more brain cells,
not to mention more muscle groups, than soccer. And Frisbee's more
fun, and anyone who doesn't agree has never been on a picnic where
after everyone ate, the Frisbee came out.
Picnics are more fun than the movies even because at the movies you
have to be quiet, and if you go to the bathroom, you miss something.
And at the movies, a soda and a small box of popcorn costs the average
American a half a week' s wages. At a picnic, a soda costs what you
can buy it for at your local discount grocery store, and it tastes
even better, because everything tastes better when it's consumed in
the open air. Another advantage of picnics over going to the movies:
You can't get fried chicken at the movies.
Hey, listen people! Do something daring this weekend! Shock your
friends and neighbors! Go on a picnic! One warning: Picnics are
addictive. Once they find out what picnics are all about, kids would
rather picnic than play organized soccer. Who could blame them? At
picnics, adults don't stand around yelling their heads off.
that if parents really care about having enough family time (which can
include teaching useful things like cooking, of course) they should
allow children no more than one extra-curricular activity.
Lenona.
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/living/17294077.htm
By John Rosemond
McClatchy Newspapers
Culture is preserved by parents who pass commonly held customs along
to their children. For generations, one such preserving custom was the
picnic. When my wife and I were kids, the picnic was a fairly regular
good-weather ritual for our respective families. These mini-vacations
were usually located far outside the city limits, in a state park or
even just at one of the many roadside picnic tables (with charcoal
grill and sometimes even a horseshoe pit) that used to dot the
American landscape. As parents, we passed the joys of picnicking on to
our kids.
I'm now aware that this cultural preservative is in danger of going
the way of the drive-in theater, another old-fashioned thing families
once got excited about, especially when Dad and Mom hid the kids in
the trunk so they wouldn't have to pay as much to get in.
For those of you who are too young to know what a picnic is, or was,
here's a brief synopsis: The parents pack a lunch of yummy albeit
unhealthy stuff like fried chicken and potato salad and really salty
pickles and various canned carbonated chemicals, and then everyone
gets in the car and travels to a shady spot in the country, away from
the hustle and bustle of city life. When a suitable spot is found, a
tablecloth is laid out on the ground or spread over a public picnic
table, the food is placed upon it, and everyone eats while commenting
on the beauty of nature. Before and after the meal, family members
take walks, throw Frisbees, play guitars and sing, or maybe just lie
back on a blanket and sleep and get a sunburned face.
It wasn't exciting, no, and that was the very idea behind a picnic. It
was an opportunity for the family to tone down their daily lives, get
away from it all, and just relax and enjoy one another's company.
Unfortunately, in these hurry-up-we-gotta-go times, organized after-
school and weekend activities like soccer have replaced relaxing
activities like the family picnic. That's too bad, because watching a
child play a sport and yelling your head off while he does is not a
family activity, nor is it especially relaxing. Yelling and relaxed do
not compute.
Today's families, more than ever, need to relax and spend relaxing
times together where there are no scores or goals or rules, which is
why I am calling for a national movement to bring back the picnic. I'm
calling it, appropriately enough, "Bring Back the Family Picnic!" If
that means taking your kids out of organized after-school sports and
the like, I say do it! Go on a picnic every good-weather weekend and
play Frisbee! After all, Frisbee probably exercises more brain cells,
not to mention more muscle groups, than soccer. And Frisbee's more
fun, and anyone who doesn't agree has never been on a picnic where
after everyone ate, the Frisbee came out.
Picnics are more fun than the movies even because at the movies you
have to be quiet, and if you go to the bathroom, you miss something.
And at the movies, a soda and a small box of popcorn costs the average
American a half a week' s wages. At a picnic, a soda costs what you
can buy it for at your local discount grocery store, and it tastes
even better, because everything tastes better when it's consumed in
the open air. Another advantage of picnics over going to the movies:
You can't get fried chicken at the movies.
Hey, listen people! Do something daring this weekend! Shock your
friends and neighbors! Go on a picnic! One warning: Picnics are
addictive. Once they find out what picnics are all about, kids would
rather picnic than play organized soccer. Who could blame them? At
picnics, adults don't stand around yelling their heads off.