NOTE: THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE COLUMN ASK THE THERAPIST OF JEWISH ECHO MAGAZINE
Question: An integral part of my family life is spending quality "family time" with my children. When we go to the bungalow colony in the summer, I feel that because all the families are so close together, we lose that special "family time" element. How can I preserve that over the summer?
Answer: To be perfectly honest, your question puzzles me. I do not quite understand how going to the bungalow colony interferes in your family time. If anything, I would imagine it increases the opportunities for your family. Let me know if I am wrong (it happens!), but the two months of the summer seem to be more conducive to family time and there are many reasons for that.
The summer is generally more easy paced and less stressed because the burden of school and the accompanying academic issues are removed. No homework, no tests, no project deadlines. Other school-related stressors are alleviated as well. Coming late to day camp is simply an inconvenience, not a federal issue. Social pressures are reduced. Parental expectations and worries dissipate. And the weather is beautiful! No snow to slog through, no layers of winter coats and other paraphernalia, no waiting for buses in the freezing cold.
This is true for summer in the city, but summer in the bungalow colony is even more relaxed. In a bungalow colony, where annoying mosquitoes are actually smashed to death against your bedroom wall, there is less emphasis on cleaning. Cooking is more chilled (and barbecues are more convenient!), clothing more casual, and mornings are less pressured (no buses and day camp begins at 10am!)
So how is family time being affected?
You have long, lazy mornings to share breakfast together or even take out the lego or bikes before day camp begins. For lunch, your kids are home and that means more time to shmooze as you eat together. The relaxed atmosphere of barbecuing is another opportunity to enjoy your family, as is the hours by the pool when all your child wants is to yell, “Look Ma! Look,” about fifty million times, and his face will light up each and every time you holler back, “I'm looking! That was fabulous!”
Because there is no pressure of homework or even an early bedtime, when the kids come in at dark, there is still time for a game before bed, for some freshly popped popcorn, for roasting marshmallows and a good scary story.
The excitement when their father comes for the weekend provides a whole additional range of opportunities in the form of sports or errands together, the family-walk-around-the-colony-after-Shabbos-cholent, splashing at the pool, Motzai Shabbos fun, some more barbecuing, and just hanging out on the beach chair sitting next to Abba (or Dad, or Totty, or even Pop—same guy, different names). Somehow in the bungalow colony, the second a mother and father sit down to relax on their beach chairs to talk to each other privately, the kids appear from the other end of the colony and become little burrs sticking to their parents (or hopping-on-Pop). So, there's your family time!
And because anyone who has spent the summer in the bungalow colony is aware of all the things I have just described, I would be more interested to understand what quality family time means to you, and why you feel the close proximity of other families make a difference.
Do you know what quality family time is? Simply being there in the present with your family. It's in the ordinary activities and conversations you have with your children, showing them that their company is important to you as are their ideas, needs, and presence in your life. And most of that kind of interaction happens in the stuff that we do every day with them. Shmoozing during dinner and hanging out on the beach chair.
What might make this difficult to do in the bungalow colony is the reality that children just want to rush out of the bungalow the minute the sun peeks its head out and don't want to return until the skunks come out at dark.
If anything is interfering with your family time, it would be that aspect of the bungalow colony.
If anything, the close proximity to others make you aware of how other families function. You gloat over your parenting expertise when you hear the neighbor shrieking every night when she puts her children to bed, and you feel inadequate when the neighbor on the other side of you throws a sleepover in her bungalow almost every other night for her children's bunk-mates.
So you can learn about family time do's and don't's from your neighbors.
And whatever you don't figure out by yourself, your children will educate you. “Ma, the Goldbergs are allowed to play with clay even when it's not raining! Can we do it, too?” or “Ma, Shimmy's mother doesn't let him play in the puddles even if he's wearing crocs, even though we told her that you let.”
And maybe you didn't even think of letting your son splash in the puddles, but watching Shimmy's family do it suddenly made you realize how much fun and healthy it is for your three rambunctious boys to do. Even if that means another trip to the laundry machines. And when they yell, “Ma, look!” you really look.
The close proximity to other families either highlight your positive parenting qualities, or make your negative aspects seem glaringly obvious, as there is no where to hide.
So the summer colony, with its bungalows crowded one atop the other can interfere with family time only if you don't pay attention to your family's needs during the summer as it may differ from the winter time.
Your children may simply to need to know that you are close by, in the pool, or in the bungalow, or on a walk with your friends, but never too busy or occupied that they can't come to you with the excitement only reserved for the bungalow colony; in which they can show you a frog they found, or a butterfly, how they learned to swim or ride a bike; bring their gaggle of friends over for freeze pops, pick flowers for Shabbos, dashing in and out of the bungalow with that constant refrain of “Mommy, look!” and the secure knowledge that you are always looking.
And on those rainy days, instead of dreading them, splash with them in the puddles, color with them, bake with them, find salamanders, and invite the neighbors in to share your family time. There's nothing as satisfying to some children as family time shared with jealous neighbors who wish their mother was as present as you are.
My book, Therapy, Shmerapy, can be found in bookstores or online