Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/09/14/heres-how-to-make-a-family.html
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“Scheduling”? For kids who are so young they aren’t reading yet? Dude, that’s farked.
I wonder whether they’ll be allowed to exit the family property/yard/compound without being followed by a drone or a parental unit.
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Perhaps they have older siblings who need to be certain places at certain times, and having the younger ones know that ahead of time avoids get-in-the-car related meltdowns? Or even just communicating “tomorrow is the weekend” or “next week we’re going to grandma’s,” to someone with very little sense of the flow of time.
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Easing transitions with kids is a good thing- letting them know (in ways they can understand) what’s coming and when it’s happening is an effective tool for reducing anxiety and meltdowns.
Not sure how you got all the way to drone-based helicopter parenting from there.
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I get it. Overscheduling by parents who are largely absent has been a problem for a few decades now. I’m not talking about parents who work two jobs each, or have to put their kids in daycare, but people who think enrolling their kids in a million and one different activities is an acceptable substitute for parenting.
That being said, I don’t think this is that, necessarily. My first thought was that it was for autistic kids who need a regular schedule but might not be able to read yet. Then, I thought that the kid might not necessarily be autistic, but still might need to know when s/he needs to go to daycare, when their older siblings have soccer practice or whatever, when the weekend is, etc. The kid doesn’t need their own schedule to be affected by the schedule of those around them.
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Yeah, I’m going to disagree with you here.
My kids start to learn the basics of scheduling before they can walk, let alone talk. Not to any level of detail, but “today is a weekday so we ride in the car to take the others to school” and “tomorrow is a Saturday so we get up early and watch football with daddy.” We have a large, busy family. Scheduling is a big deal.
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Exactly. Routines = sanity in a complicated family. A schedule is often nothing more than a graphical representation of those routines.
Doesn’t really matter how busy the family is- even a small number of events per person adds up quickly.
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I came from what was used to be called a medium-sized family - six kids. I’m obviously not hip to the ‘tight’ scheduling demands that a modern family has. I used to be blissfully unaware of all that stuff.
As a kid, every day was “play day”. Nowadays, I’m told, there’s an “unstructured play” slot, scheduled every other Thursday, from 2PM to 2:45PM.
As far as how far you’re allowed to be wander off the compound? As a six year old, I was allowed to wander around town. One day, I somehow ended up miles from my house. Someone who knew us called my mother and said: “I think I’ve seen your sons hitchhiking on the road.” She told them to tell us to go home for supper. (I have no recollection of this.)
Nowadays, parents go into full-blown Amber-alert panic mode if their children wander off, out of sight, for just thirty seconds - this despite the well-established fact that our society is the absolute safest in history.
Calvin is officially dead and Hobbes was sold on eBay for a tidy sum, AFAICT.
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Why do they need to know their schedule if they can’t alter it and don’t have to do anything to abide by it? My preliterate memory is spotty, of course, but as I recall it was “Today you’re going to daycare.” Shrug, okay. “Now we’re going to the doctor.” Shrug, okay. Hope I don’t have to get a shot. “Tomorrow we’re going to New Jersey to spend the weekend with the Wilsons.” Great, okay!
There was nothing I could do about any of those plans, and there was nothing I had to do to prepare for them.
It was a nice part of New Jersey.
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As an autistic person, knowing the schedule would definitely help me, even if I had no say in it. I don’t do jump cuts. Every transition needs to be eased.
I was never preliterate, but if I were, something like this would have helped me.
Monmouth County? It’s the only “nice part of New Jersey” I can think of, but I’m not that familiar with New Jersey.
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