This blog post is inspired by reading the book same titled from Kim John Payne and Lisa M. Ross, and the Idle Parent from Tom Hodgkinson.

Time shortage

I think the main point that in modern times the bottleneck is not the material resources (e.g. toys or hobbies or anything) but the time. Time is really the question. We buy things and we don't invest time into those. As I'm looking at our shelf of board games, I can count at least 5 that we have never touched and a bunch of others that we played probably once or twice. Even though we love board games, it is not a surprise that we didn't really have time to play with all. We love not just board games, but we have two kids, we love doing sports, we work, we have social life and simply after all of these things there is no time for board games. But it's not just board games. If I check our "home-gym", we have rowing machine (almost never in use), TRX (almost never in use), dumbbells (never in use), kettlebells (never in use) and the most used is my bicycle trainer that was not used much even though I love cycling and I love the trainer as well in bad weather or winter months. But it's all about time. The same applies to kids. They have just way too many things. Reading 'Simplicity Parenting' helps to really understand that as I fight to simplify my life (or focus on the most important things with other words), my kids are also struggling to fight ourselves out of the activities, toys, opportunities, possibilities put on them.

Cleaning up kids' room

In the last couple of weeks, we are slowly moving things out from our kids' room. We put them into the storage (mostly). And the impact is very clear. They play much more in their room. My daughter even started organizing her own things as she had finally seen the clutter that was hidden below an even bigger mess. I'm not surprised. I don't know why we think our kids would love working in that mess. I hate working in a mess. I think the problem comes from there that the fond memories come from the times when our room was a "mess", when we were playing with our toy, and those toys were everywhere in the room. But those toys were the tools of our work. Even as an adult, I have to work with my tools at hand. For an external observer, it is definitely a mess. After work, I have to put everything away. That's a nice ritual that my kids also need to learn by time. So we keep our rooms tidy, but we put a mess into theirs. Because they love those toys. I love my toys as well, but I try not to overstuff my living room with them. I need space, calm space, uncluttered space to function. Or kids need the same. The next things that will go are the assembled, precious Lego sets of mine. Those are not even belong to the kids, but I was so cruel enough to put those into the kids' room because we were playing with those a couple of times and - of course - they wanted those in their room. But those sets are not to be disassembled. Even though they are allowed to play with them, they hardly do. Hardly, I mean once a year. Those are adult toys, and we need to move them out from their space. Interestingly enough, I don't want to move them into my space. I don't want to clutter my space. So actually I hope I'll find the time selling them. By time, now my kids'd hate this idea. We don't have time for those toys, and we don't have willingness to invest time into them. They need to disappear.

Teach time management

Simplification of rhythm and schedule is also about time management. We need to give back the time to them. We need them to learn how to decide what to do, where to spend their time. Fortunately, on this front we were rather good. The calendar is our kids is not terrible. They have plenty of time when they can decide what they want to do. And even their schedule can be managed dynamically. We are not going to force or kids into activities they don't want to do. I need them to leave dealing with time management. As I stated at the beginning is this article, I think that's what we, as a society of intellectual workers struggle the most with. I can't deprive them of learning it. When I wanted them to learn biking, I have them plenty of opportunity to practice. I have to do the same with time management. And I have to be there with them to correct their steps with care and support them when they - are about to - fall. For example, my daughter promised some doughnuts for their end of year party. But then she realized that she also has a training session the day before and she has afternoon school on the day of the party. I agreed with her that we do the doughnuts before the training session. When we couldn't get them done, I woke up early in the morning and prepared everything so we can just finish them before she goes to school. Time mis-management. But we are there to help. Unless we have the same problem and we didn't learn to put slack into our calendar. Slack, we need that anyways. But that is a topic for another blog post (or books).