Since we are officially in a recession, we may not have the luxury cars, designer bags, or latest fashions to show our status, but we can still fill that calendar to show the world how important we are. And if parenting is our career of choice, then we must perform well for our bosses and fill their schedules, too! After all, how will they get into an Ivy League college if they do not start music, dance, swimming, and art lessons by age three? Tiger Woods started at age 2! Good Lord, I'm already behind and my son isn't even weaned yet! And even if I can't find golf lessons in my neighborhood, shouldn't I, as a loving mother, set aside time each day for planned recreational and educational activities?
Well, I probably should. And I sometimes feel guilty about not having arts and crafts every day after breakfast, but most of the time I embrace my chaotic parenting. Two definitions of entropy read: "a measure of the disorder or randomness in a closed system," and "a measure of the loss of information in a transmitted message." I am clearly practicing entropic parenting more than attachment parenting or natural parenting. There is much disorder and randomness in the closed system of my immediate family. There is much information lost in messages transmitted to children, to parents, and between spouses. Replacing the order so valued by society is the immediacy of existence for toddlers. Replacing the intended information is a lot to laugh about as your try to figure out what a non-verbal child is trying to tell you or what a toddler in the middle of a tantrum might need from you. These benefits of entropic parenting aren't pretty enough to make the cover of a magazine, but they are interesting enough to make a good story.
Living in entropy, we keep a loose routine in our home, but we don't have much of a schedule. Certain activities precede others (eating beans and rice for lunch precedes having a cookie), but the numbers on the stove clock don't have much to do with lunchtime, playtime, or any other time when we are at home. When clocks dictate the entire day of a child, the child and the parent miss out on opportunities to learn about themselves and each other. Life beyond a clock allows a person to control and discipline themselves. I'm not implying that toddlers are capable of self-regulation if only we threw away all our timepieces, but can't we allow them a little time to just be? How will they ever learn to self-regulate as teenagers and adults (when we parents won't be around every minute to tell them what to do) if their entire childhood is regulated by the arbitrary concept of time? [Don't think time is arbitrary? Explain Daylight Savings Time.]
Of course, clock time is necessary and beneficial, but it need not replace self-awareness. Although clock time can tell us when it is time to eat, it cannot tell us when we are hungry. Clock time tells us when to sleep, but not when we are tired; when to play, but not when we are energized; when to create, but not when we are feeling creative. A life based only on clock time externalizes our physical and emotional needs to a certain extent. How will our children learn what their bodies or minds need if a schedule is always telling us what activity is next? How will they figure out what calms them, what inspires them, what elates them or saddens them if calming, inspiring, and elating activities are predetermined in preschool educational activities? How will they determine their own boundaries - physical, emotional, and mental - without unstructured time? How will they ever be able to cry out, "I'm bored!"?
Life off the clock allows freedom. Not a prescribed hour of freedom, but real freedom. The kind of freedom you get on vacation when there is no dinner to cook, no errands to run, no laundry to fold. Some children may use that freedom to read, others to see how many times they can spin in a circle before they fall down; but they will all use it to learn about themselves. Our children have a right to live out their own manifest destiny - to push their own boundaries as far as possible before staring out at a vast ocean. On that shoreline, we parents may need to pull them back, but each time they approach that boundary, they will have more self-knowledge, and, if we have parented well, they will eventually learn how to prevent themselves from drowning.
Summer is approaching and for many that means new schedules anyway, so why not try a little experiment in entropy for yourself? Throw away the clock for a day. Don't worry about what time your child wakes up. They seem to wake up when they are done sleeping. Don't worry about what time they take a nap. They'll be cranky enough for you to know it's "time" for sleep. Instead of looking at the clock that day, look at your child. And drop me a line to tell me what you saw.
