Is your neighborhood a GHOST TOWN??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if people are idealizing the summers of their youth. The things I remember about my summers were vacations, camps and trips. I remember being bored the rest of the time, although I filled that time with reading so that wasn't a bad thing. But I would have loved to get to do some of the things my kids have gotten to do in camps. I would rather have learned to play soccer or tennis or lacrosse than "kick the can", whatever that is.

Kick the can is freakin awesome...so was 'german spotlight tag', etc. I don't know about you--but we learned soccer from our youth leagues and the reason we weren't in camps in the summer was because we had 3-4 traveling out of state tournament camps...and then Eastern Regional championships,etc. We didnt learn soccer there we played year round.

I do agree that there were some boring parts to unstructured summers....but this is where the creativity and imagination come into play. Kids need boredom. Kids need downtime. Kids need time for imagination and not 24/7 of structure and supervision. We used to play outside all day, ride our bikes to the neighborhood pool, in the evenings we would have massive neighborhood wide games like 'capture the flag', kick the can, red rover, german spotlight tag, etc. We would make up performances and roller skate in the court,etc. Lemonade stands, make our own popsicles, etc. There were days we were bored to tears but ended up laughing with our friends and siblings. I remember being ready to go back to school when it was all over.

Alas, it is not 1975-1985 anymore. There are a lot more two working families and camps and childcare are needed more. My kids will go for 4 weeks of day camps in July. We are vacationing and having some unstructured time in August. I do feel a bit sad they won't have the same fun we had--but I am sure they will have fun. It will just be different.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to camp all summer (day camp until age 8 and then 8 weeks of sleep away camp from age 9-high school). This was in the 1980s/early 90s. I loved it - those are some of my best childhood memories. We may are may not do the same for our kids, but what is with all the camp hating???!!!

8 weeks of sleep away ?? For 10 years seriously?

yes. LOVED camp! 20+ years later i'm still singing camp songs!

Just came back from lunch with a friend from camp. We both now live in DC and have been friends since we were 8 years old. We're 40 now. Who hates CAMP? It's AWESOME! This girl (much to my mothers horror) taught me to shave my legs and use sun-in.

[Anonymous]

What are you supposed to do when you have a kid school age? Mine is still a toddler, and I don't yet know this first hand, but you must arrange for some time of extended daycare type of option for your school aged kids when you both work, no way around it. Some people hire a part time nanny, others use some sort of camps where kids can be supervised until parents come back from work, what else to do? The point of these activities seems to be able to ensure your kids are not alone and unsupervised when you are at work, right?

I grew up outside of US and my school years took place during the 1980s. I grew up in a medium size city and spent some portion of my childhood in small towns as well, most households had both parents that worked and SAHM households were extremely rare. Majority of kids were pretty much unsupervised after school would let out, most of us were just latchkey kids since the very early age, left to our own devices and able to serve ourselves the food left by our parents. We took buses, trams, went to libraries, escaped to movies after school and pretty much could do whatever we wanted and get into all sorts of trouble. I mean there were elementary school age kids by themselves, South Park style. Some of the PPs describe their childhood experiences and I just wonder if that was the part of them just having much more freedom and being in general less supervised than kids are today.

I don't see this happening here and now. So, it's either SAHM or nanny households where kids can be back at home and free to roam the neighborhood, but still be supervised, or kids have to go to after school camps. In the summer the situation is the same, if both parents work, kids must be supervised by someone, so it's either the nanny or the camp. What's the point of being bitter about it? If you are a SAHM, and you feel a little stuck in your current ghost town neighborhood, you must be able to venture out and meet other SAHMs or nannies and let your kids play with other kids in the area. That is what I would do personally. Because, you cannot recreate the spontaneity of the childhood experiences without letting your kids roam free and most parents just would not. So, kids either play in their fenced in yards or go to camps. And the tendency is for people wanting their own private play space, when this happens, there is less of street play, it's just how it is.

[Anonymous]

OP, you obviously want a neighborhood filled with SAHMs. I can't really help you there since I don't live in such a place - which btw doesn't make me a Lexus craving ball of stress, nor make my kids neglected, despite what a few of you have posted. I love my job and I love my kids, and it works for us. But you might find more specific ideas if you post that as your query, rather than this sort of vague rant against the lack of neighborhood get-togethers.

Alternatively you and a few of the other PPs who resent the "DC lifestyle" also might reconsider your attitude. Your rants against parents who work and kids who do activities or camps sound really judgmental, and that may be evident IRL as well as on the internet. My kids have friends with SAHMs and others with parents who work a million hours a week. They don't care and we don't care. I work and still organize occasional neighborhood activities, and they involve families who have all kinds of different work/life balances. You might actually have a better experience where you live now if you didn't come off as hostile toward anyone who chooses to organize their family life differently than you do. Good luck.

[Anonymous]

When I first moved here one of the first things a mom said to me was "Metro parents prefer bragging about their kids than raising them." I was so taken back. I am a transplant from Texas and most moms do not work there or have part time jobs. It is indeed super crazy around here. The competition, the sports, music and dance for kids. Real Estate for homes in certain schools that don't seem to be any better than my old school township. I work part time because I have to, to honestly pay for the extras that come from this area. Cost of living, activities, preschool prices which are insane here. Your husband must have a really nice job for you to stay home so be grateful of that. I too get very homesick, especially when I have to go to work in the evenings and just want to put the kids to bed but I have tried to accept it here. I live in Fair Oaks and it is just okay with kids playing around, nothing like home. But there are a good amount of moms home during the school day. Too bad you can't come here. oh and I agree with another poster. Make friends with other transplant moms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I think these two posters have hit upon it. I don't even have a demanding job; I have chosen to downshift myself into a "mommy" type of job, but it still takes every drop of energy and then some, until I am scraping the bottom of the barrel and running on fumes, to get through my days. The commute, the job that begins when I get home, the mental stress of trying keep a home running on top of everything else, the emotional toll of being "on" for DC and DH. . .it's all such an unbelievable, far harder than I ever expected, job. I really feel like our society needs or maybe is in the middle of some type of paradigm shift in lifestyles. Because I was with my parents this weekend (my mom was a SAHM), and she was like, 'Oh, you could decorate your powder room this way. . you could swap in some black towels for something diffrent. . maybe reframe this picture in a black frame. . .jazz it up a bit." And my mind was just like, "I can only deal with the basiss: work, get my children, get them home, make sure everyone is fed, bills are paid, clothes are on people's bodies, clothes are clean, landscaping is neat but basic, husband is barely contented." I just have to get those basics taken care of; it is a sheer luxury to me to consider something like a new color scheme in my powder room or creating a sense of community in my heighborhood. I have truly come to think of those things as LUXURIES because, even with my life stripped down to the basics I have listed above, the lifestyle in this modern age which we (society? women? other? I?) have created, it's just unsustainable. Well, I am just rambling here, mostly because it's only Monday but I am already exhausted because I spent half the night tossing and turning in insonmia for some unknown reason, with snippets from the BBC whcih was on the radio working their way into my consciousness as I tried to sleep! AGH!

To this poster, it sounds like you REALLY need a change. Life doesn't have to be like this, even in this area. Strong communities make for happier people -- they aren't a luxury. If your job exhausts you this much, get a different one, or quit working/sell the house/move to a cheaper neighborhood, etc. Don't believe those who say modern life just sucks like that.