Simplicity Parenting

I've been reading a great book lately about the power of keeping things simple in our homes and for our kids.  Limiting toys, screen time, and resisting the urge to stack our schedules full to the brim.  Recognizing the importance of rhythm, consistency, simplicity,  Basically how to raise my kids in today's world with the same ideals we were raised with 30 years ago, with just Saturday morning cartoons instead of entertainment on demand, a toy box rather than a toy room, and plenty of chances to play outside (my childhood memories are split between lots of homes, but my favorite backyards included woods, creeks, secret bush forts, a playhouse that had nothing but a few cups and maybe crates for chairs in it, sandboxes, hills to run up and down, and trees to climb).  A childhood where family dinner, family prayer, and family home evening were constant, and in which we were expected to care for the things we were given, and what we were given was enough (not too much or too little, just enough).  

Over the last 10 years I've slowly realized that very little of what my kids need has to do with plastic toys or screen time (which Noah calls "scream time", ironically) and how much it has to do with consistency, nature, imagination, creativity, reasonable limitations, safety and love.  I could probably quote half of the book as it's been reassuring me that, despite all of the things that we are still trying to figure out as parents, there are a few things we're getting right.

Like slow mornings for reading in our jammies

and imaginations that create castles, 

and sort buttons, 

and publish books.  

And slow afternoons for digging in the sandbox (Adam and his friends have been hard at play with dinosaurs and lizards in the sandbox lately), 

and trying out a homemade balance beam 

 made by the boys

and scootering around or helping a neighbor get ready for a yard sale or just sitting and reading. 

The kids are all excited for camping this summer, and have promised to help me keep an eye out for poison ivy this year.  They have been asking when we're taking our annual trip to Pella for the tulip festival or to Des Moines for the art festival.  We strung up the summer deck lights today and Emma talked fondly of our evenings of fireflies and s'mores.  The simple things seem to be the ones that stick.

It is truly difficult to preserve and protect these precious years of childhood.  All around me I see overscheduled kids whose parents are working long hours to pay for their kids long list of extracurricular activities.  I see kids in 4th grade with Apple watches and iphones, and 1st graders who stop their backyard ball game to check their cell phones.  And I wonder what my kids will remember of their childhood, if they will think of it as a magical time like I did, or if they will feel rushed into adulthood like many of the kids around them.

I loved this quite in the book most of all- 

"Compare childhood to sleep, which we die without.  Childhood does something besides mark the time until adulthood.  A protected childhood allows for the slow development of identity, well-being, and resiliency.  Traditions, rhythms, consistency, nature.  Enjoying being kids, to play and to discover and to grow up slowly."

I love the peace that comes from giving my kids permission to be kids.  Because I know that this time will be over all too fast, and before we know it they'll just be remembering the memories of today.  And hopefully they'll be sweet ones.