Looking ahead
It was perhaps with a sigh of relief that most parents ushered their children off to school at the beginning of this week, after the Easter holidays. And it will be a decidedly short second term, with the unprecedented length of the June/July holidays just around the corner.
On my school run, I heard a Department of Education spokesperson on the radio cautioning as to the possible impact on academic progress, and the need to make good use of the weeks that constitute this school term.
Also, for many working parents the extended holidays ahead are going to be a challenging time, as the Cape rains inevitably set in and youngsters are driven indoors to find entertainment and recreation.
For those children who are largely unsupervised, boredom and lack of positive stimulation can be a volatile and dangerous mixture, and as communities we need to work together to come up with appropriate and affordable alternatives to offer families.
Dropping youngsters off at the mall may seem like a haven in a time where there is understandable fear about safety, but as a real solution it is sorely lacking in substance.It can also become very expensive, given the cost of movie tickets and food, and it is a sensory overload to young, developing minds.
There are youth organisations offering camps, like local churches or the Girl Guides and Boy Scouts, but this doesn’t go very far in filling a huge void. Factoring in the demographic of single parent families, where there is little recourse in terms of the availability of time or financial resources, it can take on crisis proportions.
For those who have the time or inclination to extend themselves by taking in an extra youngster, whether on an outing to a museum or fishing in one of our beautiful Boland streams, it can go a long way to relieving a worried parent’s stress, and is a wonderful way to demonstrate the ‘ubuntu’ that makes us proudly South African.
Written by Carolyn Frost You are reading Looking ahead articles
