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CHAPTER 11

A Household Built on Being

s adults, we are preoccupied with constant activity. Many of us
fill our every moment with some activity or other. The
foundation of our self-esteem rests on the amount we do, how
much we earn, how good we look, and how socially connected we are.
Our children don’t operate from this manic state until we teach them to
be this way. For this reason, to parent consciously is to operate under a
different constitution than society dictates. A child’s success is measured
by different criteria. Instead of being inundated with activities and
pressured to succeed in a world devised by adults, children are allowed to
live in the moment and celebrate the organic nature of their existence. In
this approach, grades and external measures of achievement are regarded
as but a tiny facet of a grander picture.
Encouraging the simple enjoyment of life requires us not to
overschedule our children. Instead, we allow their early years to be about
play dates and lazy hours. If children are caught up in a buzz of constant
activity from morning to night even before they reach the age of five,
how will they ever connect with themselves?
The truth is, many a modern child’s hectic schedule is more about the
inability of parents to sit still than the child’s need to do so much. We
have been raised to live in a state of constant “doing.” It isn’t just
physical activities such as working, exercising, or running errands that
keep us occupied, but also our ceaseless mental labeling, categorizing,