Is it just me?

Or do thoughts of the forthcoming holiday break make you feel slightly queasy from too much anticipated ground turbulence in your house?

I’m aware that this time of year is supposed to bring out my inner Mother Theresa. I should be overflowing with human kindness, serenity and peace on earth, which, for the first ten years of my life, I thought were called, ”peas on earth” and caused me to shudder.

I’ve got issues, though.

My Mother Theresa has been replaced by a grouchy Joan Rivers who has just been told she needs to “take a number” at her plastic surgeon’s office. She would scowl, wouldn’t she, if she was able to move her face? I’m scowling now.

During the holiday break, where is the calm in abandoned arts & crafts projects, the Lego splinters in my feet, the constant requests for food, food and more food that is never the food we already have in the house? Where is the tranquility in cabin fever, colds, complaints of boredom and sibling wrestling matches?

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Gretchen Rubin at the Happiness Project blog has a great post about fun that has interesting implications for planning your family’s leisure time.

Gretchen divides fun into three types: challenging, accommodating, and relaxing.  Challenging fun requires you to put in a fair amount of effort to learn something new or work towards a long-term goal, such as learning to play golf. Accommodating fun, involves doing an activity with other people that takes account of what the others will enjoy, such as taking your kids to the zoo. Finally, relaxing fun involves little effort or planning, such as watching TV.

Gretchen explains that challenging and accommodating fun provide the most benefits but also require the most effort:

“Challenging fun and accommodating fun, over the long term, bring more happiness, because they’re sources of those elements that make people happiest: strong personal bonds, mastery, an atmosphere of growth. Relaxing fun tends to be passive—by design.”

But (and there is a but) there’s a kicker: ”while we get more out of challenging fun and accommodating fun, we also must put more into it.”

Being cognizant of these differences can help you be more mindful of the activities you and your kids choose to do, both individually, and as a family. To sneak in more challenging and accommodating fun, Gretchen recommends keeping an eye open for activities that involve:

 learning to do something new
 visiting new places (even if it’s just a new store)
 getting together with other people, whether with friends or strangers

Hopefully, you’ll be getting a nice balance of different kinds of fun.  If you find that all or most of the fun in your house is of the relaxing variety, you may want to try to mix it up a bit – even if it’s just in small ways.

Remember the good old days when family car trips meant fighting and yelling? Where the back seat was full of “are we there yets?” and “he’s staring at me’s”? Traveling was sometimes a little frenzied but along with the squabbles came joy, laughter, singing, car games, and people actually seeing things out the window.

Nowadays our kids prepare to travel by hauling electronic devices. Nearly every member of the family is plugged into some sort of entertainment. On our last family car trip, I drove along the highway in silence. Not a sound, complaint, or argument arose from the seats behind me. We even went through a drive-thu–ordered, paid and received food, without anyone noticing. As I drove,  I looked over at my husband reading his emails, my 15-year-old son on his Itouch, my 13-year-old daughter texting wildly, and my 5-year-old watching TV and felt the strangest feeling –loneliness. How odd to be in a car with five people and feel lonely.

I wondered when we became this family of isolated travelers. Last summer we didn’t seem to be so plugged in, how did this happen?  Now it was so quiet and I hated it. After surprisingly little convincing and cajoling, everyone put down their devices and we finally did play games and make some noise. It was loud and it was chaotic — there was even some conflict — but it was wonderful. We all agreed that while we enjoy our devices, being connected to one another was much more pleasurable than being hooked up to our electronics.

It is ironic that in a world where we are so “connected” we are becoming increasingly disconnected. I went for coffee with my husband last week and saw five girls at a table together. Not one of them was talking, all were texting. As parents we have to help our children make good choices about these devices. The more our kids are connected to us, the happier and more secure in their relationships with us, the less they will be drawn to their phones and computers.

I am not against these things. These things are part of our world and tightly woven into how young people interact with each other. Devices can be great for parents, too. They can help us feel safe and know where our kids are. We can support and help them when they need us. We can send them texts about how much we love them and stay connected when we are away from them. But it is important to know when to draw the line. Making time to turn our electronics off will mean stronger family bonds and fewer missed milkshakes at the drive thru!