As an educator, I often get told how “lucky” I am to have holidays and summers “off”. Most educators bristle at this statement. My response is generally the same - you can barely handle your kids for the weeks they have off! Try dealing with 30 kids at a time, everyday, for 10 months a year!
This typically gets one of two responses- either a pinched mouth and silence, or a defensive “I LOVE when my children have off!” (I think the latter is a lie, or possibly said by parents who have raised robots that have not learned to talk back or fight with their siblings, yet.)
But seriously, WHY do kids act like such assholes when they are off from school? Here are some of my theories:
- They just got everything they wanted for Christmas, all their candy for Easter, so they don’t give a fuck. Either that or they DIDN’T get what they wanted so they’re gonna be assholes to get back at you for it! Sure, you can take away stuff, but then you have to entertain your children, which leads me to my second point…
Kids don’t know how to be BORED!!! With all the devices and YouTube and being in so many activities, kids don’t know how to spend their free time unless they are plugged in. When I take away his iPod, my son literally does not know what to do with himself! I give suggestions, but he has made time on his iPod the gold standard and everything else is just second rate. My girls are not much better. They could sit on their devices for HOURS on end. I think this is what truly makes them assholes, because of the addictive nature of screentime. There are studies showing how children become addicted to their devices and how bad it is for them. See these articles:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/12/171201122927.htm
https://nypost.com/2016/08/27/its-digital-heroin-how-screens-turn-kids-into-psychotic-junkies/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mental-wealth/201711/is-your-child-overstimulated-too-much-screen-timeBreaks lack structure. I know my kids are at their worst when they don’t have tasks like homework, after school activities, sports, etc. A lot of these go on hold during school breaks. For the summer, I used to buy those activity books that are supposed to prepare children for the next grade. I used to like the Brain Quest workbooks (https://www.workman.com/brands/brain-quest), as they were comprehensive and the kids could choose which content area they wanted to work on that day. Now, as they have gotten older, I just let them pick out a couple novels and make them read for at least an hour a day. This helps a little, but is often a struggle in itself.
Kids have too much structure. I know this contradicts my previous point, but let’s think about it. Where I live in the United States, the typical, suburban child goes to school, stays after for activities and/or child care, goes to some kind of activity in the evening (Martial Arts, sports, Girl/Boy Scouts, tutoring, music lessons, etc.). Even in the summer, kids are thrown into summer camps all summer so that the parents can work and while this isn’t as academically challenging as school (for the most part), it basically replaces school for the summer months. All of this leaves very little time for anything else. When kids get a break from this mad rush, they can’t keep themselves together! They want to spend the entire time “chilling” on their devices or being otherwise entertained. And this leads to my final point...
5 . It’s not safe to leave kids to their own devices anymore. When I was a kid, I was basically left to my own devices all summer. I would roam the neighborhood by myself or with a couple friends. We would go and explore the woods, swim in the quarry or the town pool, ride our bikes for miles, play at the park. Kids can’t do this anymore. With so many predators out there, I know that I don’t feel safe letting my children walk down the street to the park on their own! This is incredibly sad to me, because I know that I had the most fun when I was just out exploring on my own. In some ways, this is the reason for numbers 2 and 4. I knew how to be bored because I was left on my own so much and there was no one there to complain to or to find something for me to do. It wasn’t necessary for my life to be structured, first of all because we couldn’t afford many of the things that fill children’s time today and second because I always found things to do on my own or with my friends.
These are just my musings as this Christmas break winds down and my children drive me bonkers. I can’t wait to go back to work where 120 kids seem so much easier to deal with than my three.
I hope you find this valuable! Please leave comments letting me know how you deal with your children during school breaks! How do you teach them to be bored? To be grateful? To be kids?