Beneath the din of soccer leagues and digital screens, have-tos and must-haves, Bernadette Noll quietly proposes 75 simple ways to slow down, connect and create more joy in her new book, Slow Family Living (Perigree; slowfamilyliving.com).
The idea came to her after she and a psychologist friend, Carrie Contey in Austin, Texas, presented a workshop for couples on creating a family mission statement.
“The thing that kept coming up was that people were feeling pressured to do things a certain way or do things they didn’t want to do,” Noll said. “We joked afterward that there needs to be a slow family movement, like there is slow food. Later, we realized no, there really does. … It’s about trusting that childhood enrichment can come from your own family.”
Which is why Noll offers liberating testimonials without spouting dictates.
“I wanted the book to be interpreted by each family picking it up. My favorite response came from a mother who wrote me, ‘This is the first parenting book that I’ve read that doesn’t make me feel like I’m doing it all wrong.’”
Noll’s book covers lots of ground. But childhood sports crop up in a few places, touching on several tenets of Slow Family Living. Here’s what resonated for me:
Keep it informal. If a soccer league cultivates dread, disconnection and fatigue, drop it and substitute family games at the park or playground, maybe with neighbors.
Bonus fun if adults join in. You probably don’t recall who raced beside you in the 100-meter dash in high school. Bet you would remember if your rival had been your mother (which never happened with my parents’ generation). Along with neighbors, Noll, her husband and four children recently walked to a nearby school for an impromptu track meet with relay races. If I can jog for an hour on Saturday mornings,surely I can manage freeze tag at the playground.
No uniforms, chauffeuring or payment necessary. “This is also about realizing that you don’t have to consume something in order to do something,” Noll said. “One of my underlying messages is quality rather than the quantity. Even metaphorically speaking, it’s about consuming less emotionally too.”
And if you don’t have a ready-made team and want/ need a scheduled outing for the motivational aspect? Consider signing up for a parent-child karate, swim or art class. “The family in the book who did that karate class, they are still doing it,” Noll said. “They’re finding that’s one of the only times during the week where they’re all together.”
Could he miss his calling? “If your child is headed for an athletic scholarship, they are going to be as good a player if they join a team at age 14 as if they start at 4,” Noll said. “If they have that ability, they will have that ability.” She suggests that casual play with a child allows his true natural ability to emerge. “If you watch some teams, it’s a lot about an adult dictating to a child what it’s going to be, rather than letting the child naturally flow into the game.”
SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
Two key cogs in Slow Family Living:
Parental example/participation. Your child drags her feet about going outside to play? You go first and start puttering around the yard. She’ll probably follow. Think you don’t have time? You gain some if you’re not ferrying her to far-flung organized activities.
A tribe. Noll knows not everyone has a large immediate family or extended family nearby. “So how do we create that tribe of people we can do coop summer camps with or go on vacation with, to give that ‘cousin’ feel without necessarily being a cousin?” she asks. She’s formulating her next book around exactly that.
Family, Pages 37 on 05/08/2013