We’re all going on a summer holiday/No more working for a week or two/Fun and laughter on our summer holiday/No more worries for me or you for a week or two...

Songs of innocence

Summer holidays have undergone a sea change since this song was first sung by Cliff Richard.

Those were the days when during holidays, children actually did what they wanted to, rather than having their whole holidays planned for them by their over zealous parents.

Holidays were spent playing in the garden, observing nature, catching butterflies and dragonflies; trying to identify different flowers; searching for touch-me-nots and then spending hours touching them to watch their magical quality in utter fascination; lying down, looking up at the sky and trying to find forms in the clouds — it’s a bear, it’s a dog, it’s an old man…

Children would take old tooth brushes, dip them in paint and spray it around self-cut stencils to make beautiful cards. Little girls would try and imitate their moms and attempt to crochet hairbands (they were the easiest and quickest things to make) and knit patchwork baby blankets.

The sheer joy of climbing trees and breaking raw mangoes and jamuns to savour are perhaps things that today’s kids only read about (if they read, that is).

Days spent flying kites, playing pithu, I spy, hide-n-seek (not biscuits but a game) and evenings spent playing dark room (it’s a game, not a room to develop photographs) and reading, reading, reading!

Oh! Those glorious summer days of unprogrammed holidays! Alas! Gone are those days. Nowadays, especially in metros, holidays are planned from morning to night. There are dance classes, music classes, art classes, swimming lessons, golf lessons, tennis lessons, art of living classes, computer classes and summer camps, among others.

Time spent at home is always in front of some screen or the other, the TV, PC, the PSP (portable play station), and then again listening to music on the iPod and sms-ing and talking on the ubiquitous mobile phone takes up the rest of the time (phew!).

Agreed, children do have to keep up with the times, and technology does play a larger role in our lives today, but does that mean we must become robotic in nature? In this competitive and driven world, the simple pleasures of life are getting lost. It might seem that kids today learn a lot more by going from one class to another, but they do need to have time to well — just stop and stare — and let their imagination run riot and develop their creative side as well.

Earlier, children were expected to find ways to keep themselves occupied so they read anything and everything, whereas today kids treat all books like text books and therefore want to have nothing to do with them beyond the classroom and the joys of the habit of reading are lost to them.

Reading gives wing to imagination and one is never bored if one has a habit of reading. Today’s kids, who have everything planned for them and who have a surfeit of toys and gizmos. perpetually say — I’m bored.

Fortunately, it is not too late for parents to sit up and take note of how to combine the best of “then and now”.

Of course, give children gizmos and send them to various classes, but also let holidays (at least a part of them) remain just that — holidays — when children can be introduced to the simple pleasures of life that their parents knew as kids.

Take them out of cities on holidays to smaller towns and villages, where life is not so fast paced and they can be one with nature.

Children would learn to deal with stress better in their later lives if they are allowed to have a more carefree childhood. What is life if full of care, we have no time to stop and stare, seems to be the order of the day.

But fortunately, we can change that and teach children to stop and smell the roses. As Hagar aptly put it, “Shh! I’m listening to the grass grow.”