Can you actually ‘schedule’ fun? For these families, it’s worth a shot | Canada Voices

Meg Ecclestone could feel her brain “quiet quitting” on her.

With nine-year-old twin daughters ricocheting between extracurricular activities all school year, Ecclestone and her partner were wiped out come Fridays, only to face weekends filled with tedious errands.

Despite using multiple calendar systems to co-ordinate home life in Guelph, Ont., she was forgetting things: a swim meet here, a dental visit there. She wondered whether her mind was protesting the weight of keeping everything in check.

This summer, Ecclestone – a university librarian and self-described “time-management fanatic” – decided to inject more joy into the family calendar.

For these last quiet spells in August, she started slotting in “scheduled-fun adventures.” They’ll pack into the car for meandering day trips, exploring country roads and charming small towns with old libraries and coffee shops. They’ll visit a flower market, swim at the Elora Gorge, and walk in the woods. The mother knows her daughters will initially resist the hikes, only to race through the forest, morphing into “happy, feral, little cubs.”

“My kids don’t need to do 40 things a week,” Ecclestone said. “They’re going to remember that time we swam in the Grand River. It’s family core memory-making, relaxing, enjoying our time together.”

As the pace of modern life accelerates, more families are deliberately setting squares aside on the calendar for downtime – unstructured days with no goals or agendas. These are days for exploring, adventuring but also rest – days that might be considered “unproductive” in the modern sense but feel ever more valuable for harried people hoping to restore themselves.

While scheduled fun might sound like an oxymoron, without it families often end up deprioritizing the more exciting parts of life, says Ann Douglas, Ottawa Valley-based author of Happy Parents, Happy Kids.

“A lot of us, multiple generations, were raised with the idea that you do all the work you have to do first. On the weekend, you do the laundry and the groceries and take kids wherever you have to take them. Then it’s 7 o’clock on a Sunday night, you have a bit of spare time, but now it’s time to get ready for the week,” said Douglas, who raised four children with her husband in Peterborough, Ont.

Canadians spend a meagre 1.3 per cent of each day on hobbies, arts and leisure, according to Statistics Canada. (Think board games or crafting, being in nature, taking in art or playing an instrument.) Increasingly, people are also spoiling vacation days meant for decompressing with family. Nearly half of Canadians surveyed this spring by Angus Reid and Employment Hero admitted to working through a holiday, with 41 per cent feeling guilty during their paid time off.

Douglas questions why we meticulously plan all the dull, obligatory parts life, but not the mirth and pleasure.

“Sometimes, we need to front-load fun,” the author said.

With five kids from the age of 2 to 14 to wrangle in Burlington, Ont., Christine Tao and her husband made a conscious decision to confine their children’s activities to two weekday evenings. That leaves three weeknights for themselves, plus Sunday, their family “sabbath” – no chores, sports practices, or driving to those practices.

“We’re living our life together as a family,” said Tao, a seminary student. “It is a very hollow family structure when you’re just a chauffeur.”

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On the family’s free days, Tao turns to her shared Google calendar, where she’s plugged in reminders about local music, arts and culture festivals, gallery exhibits and art crawls, library crafting events, as well as playgroups for her younger ones.

“Our family knows this is all optional and flexible. We keep those spaces open on our calendar and then decide, do we want to rest today, or do we do a fun thing? We have the freedom.”

She gleaned the wisdom of underscheduling while running a moms’ group. Mothers of older kids warned her that overpacking the calendar was a common parenting trap.

Douglas, the author, can see how older generations might scratch their heads at the notion of penning in fun and rest. Today, parents anxious about their children’s futures are setting aside less free time, filling their kids’ hours with activities meant to impart new skills.

But Douglas argues that unambitious family time is equally valuable. “Relationship skills, the ability to relax and have fun, pacing yourself, emotional flexibility, being able to change plans – these are all essential skills for the future.”

She reminds parents to curate experiences that feel fun for them too, instead of letting kids run the show every time.

Even in families without young children at home, fun can require foresight.

Every year, Catherine Wilde, her mother and her sister carefully plan an adventure together. Though Wilde and her mom live 15 minutes apart in Calgary, her sister is in Vancouver. Both siblings work demanding schedules.

“Fun for some people is going out for coffee or the local pub to shoot some pool. For me, fun is a much more planned, intentional event,” said Wilde, a director of partnerships and scholarships at a national education association.

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It starts with a shared Google document, where the women weigh in on how they want to spend their time together.

In June, they travelled to a cottage on Galiano Island in British Columbia. They decided to try something different – art projects, including handmade decorative coasters. This month, they’ll venture to Medalta, a museum and former industrial ceramics manufacturing complex in Medicine Hat, Alta.

“With my family, what we found is that we really want to be having experiences together,” Wilde said. “We’re realizing as we’re aging that time is going by really quickly. We need to co-ordinate because we’re all busy.”

To her, spontaneity can feel stressful: Deciding things last minute means plane tickets get expensive, campsites fill up and tickets sell out.

“With time pressures, my friends and I have been talking about how we don’t play or have fun the way you did as a child,” Wilde said.

“How do you know that you’re having fun? Fun is where there’s this unbridled energy. You feel free. You feel unencumbered. I feel like now, fun is becoming very structured.”