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Wednesday, June 8, 2016

This summer I am not culturing my children

Isn't that what you do to oysters?  You culture them?
I'm not sure what that involves....
Let me google it.

Hmmmm...the simplest method involves oyster spat (whatever THAT is).

Ok, I'm neither culturing oysters nor my children this summer.

Our city has a free cultural program that we've done the past two years, and I'm not doing it again for a variety of reasons.

First, we've done most of the things on the list in years' past, and I have no desire to do them again.

Second, I think I just don't care anymore.

This is the summer I don't particularly care whether my children learn a darn thing.  My goal is to have them read every night before bed.  Boom!  Summer plans in a nutshell.

I don't feel like thinking or instigating or devising.  I don't feel like being a concierge of their lives, as I have done for the past however many years.

So far this summer, I've stolen two ideas from friends based on what they've done with their kids....both of which have been outside activities.  I did take my kids to a local fossil bed without stealing that idea from anyone.  We've gone to the zoo where we happened upon a neat bird show (which I hadn't planned for them to see).

N is doing a field hockey camp this week (2 hours a day).

Next week we're doing Girl Scout camp (including the boys, and they are gonna love it even if it kills them).

We're heading up to Michigan this summer, too, to hike and explore and be off the grid.

There is something really glorious about not giving much of a $hit anymore.  And, of course, it's not that I don't give a $hit about my kids, but I don't care to worry about these weeks of summer and whether we are "making the most of them" and "savoring them" and all those inspirational notions of what summer could be or should be.

My kids are spending about 7 hours a day on their Kindles or Touches.  Provided they don't lose the ability to form complete sentences or have brain goo coming out their ears, I think I've reached a point where I think that is probably just fine.  

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