Living the Simple Life

by Elaine St James

  The hectic lives we’ve created have become an acceptable and, in many circles, a respectable way to fill up complex and expensive time management systems. Have you ever added up how much time you spend keeping one of those systems up to date? Most of the time is spent rewriting on tomorrow’s schedule the things you didn’t get done today.

  Getting to the point where we don’t have dozens of things to do each day is a big part of what simplifying is all about. If you’re thinking of going to a simpler system, it may take you several successively smaller sizes to get to simple. And obviously it will mean taking steps to cut back on the number of things you feel you have to do each day.

  A hectic schedule is a lifestyle choice. We don’t have to be chained to a huge time management system. As one proponent of the simple life, an executive from New York wrote, “I know I’m in trouble if I’ve got so many things to do that I have to make a list.”

  ELEVEN

  Simple Parenting

  85. Keep Your Life Simple

  Simple parenting is an oxymoron, of course, since there are no simple kids. But our lives with our kids can be made simpler than they now are.

  Simplifying with kids requires exactly the same things that simplifying without kids requires: time, energy, awareness of the problems, an understanding of the relevant issues, self-discipline, the ability to set boundaries (for both ourselves and our children), the strength of character to say no and stick to it, and the willingness to do whatever it takes to make the adjustments and rearrangements in our lives so we can bring about the desired changes.

  The only difference is that simplifying with kids requires more of all this. Much more.

  I want to point out that I don’t have children of my own, though I do give myself some credit for marrying a man who has two terrific kids. Looking back, I see that simplified my life a good deal. They were 9 and 14 when I came on the scene, so I’ve never experienced the joy of changing a baby’s diaper or the bliss of waking up for a 2 a.m. feeding (though I did share in a couple of sleepless nights with Gibbs when, at 2 a.m., it was clear our 16-year-old was not going to be home at midnight as we’d all agreed!).

  Since the boys were with us only on the weekends and for vacations, I’ve never had to deal firsthand with the full-time, ongoing issues of laundry, chores, television watching, car pooling, day care, homework, drugs, teen sex, pregnancy, and the myriad other issues that full-time parents with kids face today.

  But I’ve been surrounded my entire adult life with friends who have kids, so over the years I’ve observed some things that work and some things that don’t work, and I have a couple of admittedly quite biased opinions of my own to share as well.

  The best advice I, as a nonparent, can give to someone with children is this: Simplify your own life. In the process, the complications of having children will become more manageable.

  If you could free up ten or twenty hours a week to spend with your kids or to eliminate or reduce some of the pressures you face—which simpifying will enable you to do—at the very least you can clear away enough of the day-to-day concerns so the dilemmas you have to deal with as a parent can be put in their proper perspective: Your kids are the most important issue of your life right now.

  Continue to ask the question, “What do I need to do to simplify my life?” (#18). Just asking that question and taking the time to listen for the answer will provide you with the right solutions for your particular circumstances.

  The suggestions that follow in this chapter are obviously not the only things parents can do to simplify their lives with kids. But, in terms of simplicity, they are, in my opinion, some of the most important ones to get started on.

  86. Involve Your Kids in the Household Chores

  Many parents wrote to say they had simplified their lives by requiring their children to help with routine household duties.

  One mother, Jennifer Sellers, a secondary school teacher who has taken a sabbatical to be with her children, put it beautifully.

  “This may seem like a no-brainer to anyone without children, but it is rare to find children who help with household chores today.

  “I was at a talk given by John Rosemond, who writes about parenthood, and he asked the audience, ‘How many of you have children over five who have regularly assigned chores that must be done to certain standards—and they don’t get paid to do them?’

  “In a full auditorium only half a dozen hands went up.

  “He then asked how many of those present had chores when they were kids. Every hand went up. ‘That’s one generation, folks,’ he responded.

  “My children do a lot willingly and for no monetary pay. We achieve this by:

  1. Letting them ‘help’ when they were little. It would actually take me twice as long to accomplish the task with this ‘help,’ but it gave me time to talk with my children, and the task eventually did get accomplished. The payoff is that now I have excellently trained assistants who truly do help today.

  2. Use working together as an opportunity to be together. When you’ve finished playing Candyland, your work still waits. When you’ve made soup together, you’ve gotten dinner accomplished, trained a future cook, visited together, and your child will blossom from the pride of making dinner.

  3. Being profuse with thanks and gratitude and compliments and comments.

  4. I’ve found it’s better to give young children several short chores rather than one long task. My youngest wipes off the cat’s mat and the trash can lid, takes out the recycling and compost, washes the compost bucket, wipes off the counter where the recycling piles up, and changes the kitchen linens daily.

  All of these are things I used to do and don’t do now. None in themselves are time consuming, but collectively they save me time and energy and don’t overwhelm my 7-year-old. He dries dishes every third night (three children), but I don’t ask him to wash the evening dishes. I feel it would be too much for him and stifle his desire to help.

  My teenagers do longer tasks. Sometimes I pay them to help, but only for a special usually strenuous task, never for a regular chore.

  5. I stress how lucky they are to be learning how to do things and how to work. They’ll be the ones getting the jobs in the future.

  “I always try to remember that a child’s self-esteem is not built by silly stickers that say, ‘You are special!’ but rather by having achieved a genuine sense of accomplishment and a sense of being a contributing and valuable member of the community (family).”

  A friend of mine who has three children simplifies the household chores by posting a chart of duties on the fridge door each month. If there’s any question about whose turn it is to do the dishes, for example, she can point to the chart as the authority. This eliminates any discussion. (She does end up with a fair amount of graffiti on the chart, however.).

  87. Curtail Their Extracurricular Activities

  I hear from both parents and kids on this one. And it’s heartening to learn that people are starting to figure out that even though everything is available to kids today, kids don’t have to do everything.

  One mother of two teenage children wrote to say they had finally sat down together as a family and made a group decision: only one or two extracurricular activities per season per kid.

  Both parents were surprised at first at how readily the kids agreed to this seeming restriction. But as time went on, they found that not only were the kids amenable to the idea of fewer after-school activities, they were actually relieved at the prospect of not having to compete and/or perform in so many different areas: dance, golf, gymnastics, hockey, and voice lessons for her; football, hockey, track, and chess for him.

  Over the course of the two years since they began this cutback, they’ve all become aware of the following benefits.

  The kids are no longer exhausted from being constantly on the go. Their mother is relieved of the responsibility of being on call as the family chauffeur. Both kids’ academic performance has improved dram
atically and so has their performance in their chosen activity.

  They get along better with each other and with their two younger siblings. The mother’s private explanation for this is that they all now have more of her time, so their innate need to compete for her attention has diminished.

  The family as a whole is happier because they’re less stressed out and each has more quiet time on their own.

  We’ve been so imbued in recent years with the belief that we have to take advantage of all the opportunities out there. The urge to do everything complicates our lives. We’ve lost the ability to distinguish between the things we’d like to do and the things we feel we should be doing.

  We’ve passed this complication on to our kids. Often we allow peer pressure—our peers and our children’s peers—to influence our decisions. We want our kids to have the same opportunities that all the other kids have, or opportunities we didn’t have. But it’s so easy to get carried away. We don’t have to do it all. Our kids don’t either.

  You could start by cutting back on even one or two after-school activities to see if it doesn’t greatly simplify your lives.

  88. Monitor Your Children’s Television Viewing

  In psychologist John Rosemond’s excellent book, Six-Point Plan for Raising Happy, Healthy Children, he makes a strong case for heavily monitoring what our children are watching on television.

  The fact that much of the television programming for kids—not to mention for adults—is of questionable value is not at issue here; though the quality of the material available should be sufficient reason for any caring parent to curtail television usage.

  According to Dr. Rosemond, even programs like Sesame Street and other socially acceptable educational kids’ shows foster passive learning traits that are detrimental to a child’s future learning abilities.

  But there are other issues here that are not often addressed. We think allowing a child to sit in front of the television screen simplifies our lives because it gives us a break. But according to Dr. Rosemond, not only does regular television viewing stifle initiative and creativity, but it develops addictive patterns and children who depend on you, rather than on themselves, for their entertainment. Children who grow up not knowing how to create their own happiness and sense of well-being are going to be entering the real world with a major handicap.

  And any child who has developed the ability to think and do for himself or herself is going to have a decided advantage over all those developmentally impaired kids who spent an average of seven hours a day in front of the tube.

  Because of the harmful effects of television on a child’s ability to learn, Dr. Rosemond believes no child should be allowed to watch television until they’ve learned to read well. Then, if permitted at all, television should be closely monitored and greatly curtailed.

  Set parameters. They can watch an hour a day of a program you approve of. And perhaps another hour of a quality educational program. Then the set gets turned off. My friend Vera bought a television with a hidden control switch, so the set can’t be turned on in her absence.

  Pick up a copy of Steven and Ruth Bennet’s 365 TV-Free Activities You Can Do with Your Child.

  If you need some outside support in eliminating television, contact TV-Free America, 1322 18th Street NW, Suite #300, Washington, DC 20036 (202) 887-0436 for a free booklet that will show you how to organize and participate in a TV-free week in your community.

  89. Teach Your Kids How to Handle Money at an Early Age

  When I was 8 years old, my dad started giving me an allowance of fifty cents a week. The only advice he gave me at the time was to save half of it. I could do whatever I wanted with the other half, but it was to take care of any extras I might want. If I spent it all in one place, which I did for the first couple of weeks (all twenty-five cents of it), I couldn’t go running back to Dad for more. I had to wait until the next weekly infusion of cash. I learned pretty quickly how to set aside money for unexpected contingencies—the double feature and popcorn on Saturday mornings—and how to budget my income.

  This allowance was not connected to any household chores I was required to participate in. I had long been expected to do basic tasks like making my bed, helping set the table for dinner, and hanging up my clothes after school.

  My involvement in chores increased as I got older; they were what I was expected to contribute as a member of the household. My allowance was my parents’ way of getting me accustomed to handling money wisely. They provided all of my basic needs, but expected me to budget for and pay for any extras I might want.

  By the time I entered high school I had my own checking account and a savings account and knew how to reconcile them both. Thanks to Dad’s guidance, and his willingness to let me fall on my face a couple of times, I grew up confident about my ability to handle money so I could always take care of my basic needs and have money left over. The habit of saving part of my income has stayed with me through all my working years.

  Mary Hunt, in her book The Cheapskate Monthly, outlines a similar program she and her husband used to get themselves out of debt and to set up their two boys with a program for handling their own expenses at an early age.

  There are a couple basic differences in her program and my dad’s. The first is that each child was required to save 10 percent and also to give away 10 percent of their income to a cause of their choice. It could be to a needy friend, to the local library fund, or to a charity.

  Secondly, they gave the boys a larger amount of money, which was to cover everything above the basic room and board provided by the parents. And they gave them a raise at the beginning of each school year that was appropriate to the expenses each child would be encountering. So the boys had to learn to budget for all their expenses, including clothes, school books, entertainment, school trips, bus money, birthday gifts for friends, family presents, and everything else.

  The parents agreed not to interfere with how the kids spent their money. But they made it clear that the boys couldn’t come to them for more money if they spent it all early in the month and needed more to get them through. If they ran out before the next “payday,” that was tough; they’d just have to wait.

  While Mary admits it was hard to refuse her kids the extra money they thought they needed when they spent it all on the first day, they stood by their rule.

  As a result, both boys quickly learned how to handle money at an early age. By the time the boys were old enough to drive, they each paid for their own cars—and the gas and insurance needed to run them—and also had money set aside for continuing their education.

  Mary’s book lists some guidelines in terms of the amount of money that would be appropriate for various age groups. Any of her principles could be adapted to your children and your own circumstances.

  For example, not every child is mature enough to be trusted with a month’s allowance. If you have a child who would spend it all on candy (or beer, or drugs), you’d need to dole the money out more carefully and perhaps require a strict and detailed accounting of how the money is spent.

  Teaching your kids how to handle money wisely will not only simplify your life, it could be one of the most powerful gifts you give them.

  90. Set Buying Limits for Toys and Candy and Stick to Them

  One of the more publicly visible complications that parents have with children is played out in supermarket checkout lines across the country week after week. It’s the chilling scream of the distraught child whose mother has not yet agreed to allow him to purchase both the gummi bears and the space cadet suckers.

  One solution is to leave the kids at home when you go shopping. Obviously, there are times when it’s not possible to do this. And besides, kids need to be taught how to behave in public. So in one sense, grocery shopping is a good training ground.

  I’ve discussed this with dozens of parents, and they all agree the answer seems so simple: Just say no. But the trick is to say no or let your kids know what you will al
low them to buy, if anything, before you go into the store, and then stick to that decision. Describe ahead of time what the consequences will be if they cry or throw a tantrum, and stick to that, too.

  Another approach is to start as early as possible to use an appropriate variation of Mary Hunt’s allowance system (#89), and, within reason, let each child learn to make his or her own decisions about how to spend the money they have available.

  91. Set Limits for Your Parents and Other Well-Intentioned Relatives, Too

  It’s one thing to set parameters for items you buy for your kids or what you allow them to purchase, but it’s just as important to set the parameters for what your parents and grandparents can buy for your kids.

  For years, my friend Liz has purchased extravagant Christmas gifts for her niece and nephew who live several thousand miles away from her. Several years ago she had an unavoidable business trip that took her out of the country for most of December. Since she was going to be away over the holidays, she made her gift selections early and sent them off to her sister at the end of November.

  She called several days later, just before she was to leave the country, to wish them all Merry Christmas and was shocked to find out that the kids had already opened her presents.

  “But why didn’t you wait until Christmas?” she wailed to her sister.

  “Liz, they get so many presents from the grandparents and the stepgrandparents and the aunts and uncles and other assorted family members that if they don’t open a package or two each night, starting several weeks before Christmas, they’d still be opening presents halfway through January.”