Are You Playing?

Play and Leisure Time

Lack of time … might be the most pervasive enemy the healthy family has. “Stress management,” “role overload,” and “executive burnout” are concepts that would have been considered strange fifty years ago, yet they are major themes in today’s world.

The fast pace and complex business of our lives threatens a crucial resource: time. Without time, families lack the opportunity to nurture the basic qualities (such as good communication) that ensure their health and growth. Without time, families lack the opportunity to simply be. Healthy families realize they need to get away from work and responsibilities and simply enjoy one another (and life in general).

Quality time together need not be spent on lengthy or expensive vacations. A relaxed meal together or a game in which everyone participates can serve the same purpose – a lot more often.

The capacity to enjoy one’s family, with humor and playfulness and without strict structure and scheduling, seems to come more easily to some than to others. Parents may have difficulty learning to leave a messy desk at work or a sticky kitchen floor at home in order to relax with each other or with their children. They may feel a moral obligation to be a good provider or a perfect housekeeper that precludes their closing the door on disaster and going for a walk in the park.

Yet, time taken to play and relax with our loved ones pays off in ways clean desks and shiny floors never can. When we look realistically, we see that the papers will never stop flowing onto the desk and the jam will never stop dripping onto the floor, but our children and our mates will not be as they are now ever again. If we don’t take the time now to enjoy our families, we’ve lost an opportunity forever. Healthy families know this and give play and leisure time high priority.

Hampton Today made possible by sponsors like: Michelle Hartman – Tupperware –641-373-8880 Denise Passehl – Watkins – 641-579-6227 Long Branch Supper Club – 641-458-8027 Patrick Palmer – The Computer Guy – 641-420-1234 Seven Stars Restaurant - 641-456-5378