Long time, no posts.

Almost every culture and religion has sacred time of rest. A variation of the Sabbath that is proscribed across cultural, religious and geological boundaries. A ritual that (in most cases) honors the god(s), but importantly takes care of ones own mental wellbeing and family/community connections by resting and simply being together. To read more on the community and personal benefits of a Sabbath day read this wonderful ABC article by Natasha Moore.

As Natasha points out, it is rumored that Australia is a country that excels at this notion of rest (lovely long weekends, the revered gap year etc) but this part of Australian culture escaped me. I don’t have religion (thus no Sabbath day) and my primary ‘culture’ (though it is sad to say) was my work. (Indeed by the statistics in the report, it seems this is the case for many over worked Australians!)

Personally I went from studying so intensely that the university mistakenly offered me a place before I had finished high school (as my educational record had made me look ahead of my grade). After uni I progressed on to working such long hours that my husband and I took our ‘honeymoon’ on a work trip to Shanghai, the day I went into labor we had to stop in at work on the way to the maternity ward, and on our first day home with baby, a client came to work with us in our lounge room!

Both my husband and I then continued to work the equivalent of full time jobs each (with baby on hip all the way). And it wasn’t until after the arrival of my second child (and with my first needing extra care due to her newly diagnosed arthritis) that I technically took ‘maternity leave’ (meaning I still worked a bit, but was not on call to clients 7 days a week for the first time since I was 19.)

As you can see we are not very good at ‘rest’. In fact even now (when we have toned down our work commitments) – I can count the weekends that we have had off as a family (this year) on one hand. Like most families; even those weekends were full of work calls and birthday parties etc! This lack of true ‘down time’ is not uncommon in any modern family, but it isn’t healthy.

These past Easter holidays I decided to take a true break, to stop, and hide in our house with the kids.

For the first week: we slept in, we pottered around the house, we didn’t clean anything (that we didn’t really have to in order to eat etc!), we didn’t embark on any projects, we didn’t have anyone over, we didn’t even go out to the supermarket.

We did read 100s of books. We watched a couple of movies. We took naps. The kids sat in the sunny spot and played dolls, I drank tea and watched them. Etc.

By the end of the first week we were largely back to the pleasant relaxed family that had somehow got lost during the term.

There is extensive research into why we turned back into a nice family after a little bit of true rest. It’s best explained in these few presentations:

This is a talk by circadian neuroscientist Russell Foster about the neuroscience behind why it is vital to get enough sleep to be a good (and healthy/functioning) person.

This article that I mentioned before is a great look at some of the history behind the Sabbath day. (And a great look at the proven community and personal benefits of having a day of rest.)

And if (like us) you can’t schedule a set day each week – this presentation takes a more whimsical approach to ‘down time’ – designer Stefan Sagmeister talks about how he takes a full year off every 7 years (and the benefits that has for his productivity as well as his own creativity and personal development).

None of these talks are directly related to young children or families, but the principals are easily transferable.

If you would rather take a more fictional look at the subject I highly recommend the 1973 book MoMo by Michael Ende. It is perhaps one of my favorite works of literature about a girl who grapples with the men from ‘time savings bank’ – men who syphon people’s free time to exist (while no one remembers seeing these bankers, the more people try to ‘save time’ the less time they have, and so on). It’s brilliantly clever, an easy book to digest and thoroughly enjoyable to read. (For adults, and children who enjoy hearing picture-less chapter books too).

While our designated holiday rest period is over and we are back to the normal program of activities (albeit a little more refreshed!) we intend to focus on actively on spending more ‘down time’ this year. Our house renovations might not progress as far as they could, we might miss out on a few activities. But we will be able to function and develop at our full potential.