Quality Time

By Dr. Wendy Mogel

A mother pleads:

“Rabbi, something’s bothering my son. Maybe it's the divorce, maybe it's his friends.... You relate well with kids. When can I bring him to see you?”

The rabbi suggests Wednesday at 4:30.

“That won't work. Jordan has basketball.”

The rabbi offers another time.

“No good. He has his math tutor.”

And another.

Guitar lesson.

Seeing that this kid's appointment calendar is busier than his own, the rabbi already knows why Jordan is angry.

We are ambitious and industrious parents, but these two fine traits can pollute our relationship to time. It’s good to make the most of our time, but using time well doesn’t necessarily mean squeezing more out of it. If we focus only on scheduling acitivites and monitoring homework, we can lose treasure quality precious moments with our children. To use time well, we must work to protect it.

Judaism’s secret for rest, reflection, and renewal is Shabbat.

THE BEST OF A DAY OF REST
More than Israel kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept Israel. – Ahad HaAm

Mindful of a hurried life’s hazards, Judaism provides a powerful antidote. Right up front, just minutes after creating time itself, G-d created a means of protecting it.

“On the sixth day G-d completed all the work and on the seventh day He ceased...G-d blessed the seventh day and sanctified it.” —Genesis 2:3

The Hebrew word for rest in Exodus 31:17 is vayinafash, related to nefesh, meaning “soul.” Shabbat renews our soul, for “with our extra Sabbath-soul, sadness and anger are forgotten. Joy reigns on high and below.” Peak spiritual moments may happen spontaneously, but Sabbath increases the odds that we'll find these moments, that they will be prolonged rather than fleeting.

HOLY DOWNTIME
Let me share with you how my family's Shabbat evolved.

One Friday night twelve years ago we lit candles, stumbled through a blessing, kissed each other, said, “Good Shabbos,” and went to the Thai restaurant for a shrimp dinner. The next week, we said kiddush over Manischewitz wine and went back to the Thai restaurant. A month later, I baked a challah and we stayed home for dinner. A year and a half later we were home every Friday night for a full Shabbat dinner, said the blessings over the candles, the children, motherhood and the sacred day.

We appreciate spending the afternoon at home with the children and their grandparents with no competing agendas, no phones, no mail, no errands.

We embellish and beautify a Mitzvah; for the Shabbat table we use silver instead of weekday utensils.

We put flowers on the table. We serve wine and grape juice—an exotic with too much sugar and stain potential to be a weekday staple in our house. We dress up and invite a guest or two.

However busy we are during the week, we know that our special Friday night lies ahead. We whisper the beautiful sentimental blessing softly in our children’s ears,”May the Divine light shine on you and bring you peace.”

My husband recites King Solomon’s “Woman of Valor” that begins with 'She is more precious than rubies.’ We go around the table and share our good news. We discuss Torah ideals of charity and justice, and end by singing the grace after meals. Shabbat’s work restrictions offer us a deeper freedom than if we didn't make the day distinct.

Our Friday dinner and slow-paced Saturdays reverberate through the rest of the week. Sabbath’s stability of family life is not relegated to a single day. The idea that each moment be used wisely, that each has the potential for holiness, trickles down to the rest of the week.

The first step down the path to Shabbat-think is to recognize which elements of contemporary life pose the biggest obstacles.

THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE WORK
Jackie, an architect, told our parenting class that she was coming home later and later. No office romance. Just a sense of dread. After asking her lots of questions, we pieced together “the back story.”

When Jackie arrived home from her office she felt like she needed a whistle, a bullhorn, and a mechanical claw to keep the line moving. She walked from room to room picking things up off the floor and shouting commands to her children. “Stop watching television! Finish your homework! Eat supper! Clear the table! Take out the garbage! Get in the bath! Stop playing with the bubbles and wash your hair! Get out of the bath! Get in bed! Hurry up and start sleeping! Wake up and wash up! Find your backpack! Go outside and wait for the carpool!”

Weekends provided no respite from this pressure. Chores not done during the week pile up. There were bithday presents to buy minutes before the parties, Little League games to cheer at, homework projects to finish, and, for Jackie, a sense of unease that she wasn't connecting, wasn't really close to her children.

When Jackie arrived at work the scene was different. It was quiet and neat. Her grown-up buddies were there. They celebrated birthdays together, drank coffee, worked on projects that interested her. There were no snippets of construction paper on the floor, and if there had been, it wouldn't have been her job to pick them up. At work she was making an important and measurable contribution. She built things. She was appreciated. She got paid. She started to come home later and later. Arlie Russel Hochschild, author of The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work, writes how people start to see work as a place to relax.

When working parents spend long hours away from home, home becomes a workplace, where there is too much to accomplish in the few hours before bedtime. Reviewing Hochschild's book, Nicholas Lemann summarized the fallout: “Children are subjected to factory style speed-ups, rushed from one place to another all day and must squeeze all their emotional needs into the hour or less that their parents have to spare in the evening.”

Jackie felt irritable, powerless and guilty at home about her inability to do a better job. When I told her that slowing down was hard, and that is why G-d had to command it, I saw the light of recognition in her eyes.

“That’s it,” she said. “I should cut down on my work. I'm not home enough! That's the problem.”

“Cutting down is part of the solution, but your attitude and goals at home are just as important as how much time you spend there,” I replied. “It's a funny contradiction. If you're ambitious at home the same way you're ambitious at work, you won't succeed. Your 'product' at work is a perfectly engineered, functional, beautiful building. The product you're after at home is an environment where four tired human beings not only get the homework done and the teeth brushed but also unwind and restore their connection to one another by sharing food and conversation.”

For this restoration to take place, parents must exercise discipline, but not the reach-the-goal discipline exercised at work. At home you do your job best if you are, superficially at least, inefficient. Although it might ease your sense of anxiety to load the dishwasher and return phone calls the instant you get home, control the urge. You're doing your job better if you let the dishes and phone calls wait while your daughter tells you, in one breathless download, how her teacher's son once got lost on a trip and they couldn't find him for four hours.

“A messy home is not a restorative home, and I'm not advocating squalor,” I told Jackie. “But your family will appreciate being at home more if it offers something besides cleanup detail and logistical planning.”

TOO WIRED
The school forms we have to fill out keep getting longer. Mother's e-mail address, beeper number, cell phone, fax machine number, and then Dad's. A nice, safe feeling in case of emergency. All this access is positive, but there’s a price for being so wired up: sometimes my house beeps like a hospital ICU, and the once relatively impermeable home is now permeable.

Busy at work and wired at home, we’re victims of the mixed blessings of the computer age lifestyle. We should sometime cut down on overtime and endure a messy house for a few extra moments with our family.

A whole day of rest can seem terrifying. We're not afraid of losing time but of having time to reflect. Without the distractions and interference, we may have to confront feelings of disappointment, loneliness, frustration, panic, helplessness and exhaustion, and our fear that we aren’t strong enough to make the necessary changes.

HOMEWORK: THE TIME BANDIT
With a clear sense of mission, we can change some of the behavior that robs us of time with our family. But there is one particularly insidious frustrating force: homework. Beginning in kindergarten and accelerating through twelfth grade, homework consumes the evening, cranks up household tensions, and turns freewheeling kids into nervous grinds.

It wasn't always this way. Homework is now at its highest level ever. Researchers found that elementary school homework tripled from 1981 to 1997, and progressive educators in many school districts actually banned homework in primary schools.

Everybody points fingers. Teachers complain that parents anxious about college admission demand lots of homework. They say that if they don't assign it, parents feel cheated, as if they've visited the doctor and gone home without a prescription. Parents complain that schools require homework to prepare children for the batteries of standardized tests that will rank schools and teachers. I suspect that some parents use homework as a low-cost, wholesome baby-sitter. Since children can't run free in the neighborhood after school, homework is an appealing alternative: more time doing homework means less watching television.

But just as taking more vitamins than you need doesn't make you healthier, upping the homework load may not be helpful. A study showed no improvement in standardized test scores as a result of greater homework volume. More homework doesn't generate greater academic skill, it generates more children with headaches, stomachaches, bad dreams, and a bad attitude toward school.

With academic trends shifting every decade or so, parents can't afford to base their goals for their children solely on grade point averages or test scores that will look good on a college application. The children have too much to lose. A good way to set your child's schedule and your own expectations is to rely on the trusty Jewish principles of moderation, celebration, and sanctification. Homework is fine, in moderation. Watch that the work isn't crushing your child's celebration of his youth or ruin your chance to savor the time you have with him.

Find Time to Connect
What do you do when your child talks to you? Chances are, you keep doing what you were doing before she started in. Even if it's just for two minutes, stop whatever you’re doing, get down to her eye level, and put your hand on her shoulder. Look at her. Listen to her. If she's not used to this she may ask you why you're mad at her. Reassure her that you are just interested, just listening to what she's saying.

Before too long your children will be teenagers. They may no longer prefer your company to that of their friends. If you've got a spare moment, sit down beside your child. “Mom, why are you sitting here?” she may ask. “Everything is so hectic, I just missed being near you,” you can reply.

Often your children will have to do things more quickly than is natural for them. Try to balance this high-pressure time with leisurely time.

Guarding time is not for the lazy or weak. It takes devotion and commitment to protect your Shabbat time alone with your family, opening a door for our children to a rich and meaningful life that no money can buy.