Parents and kids today are spending every free hour away from school and work running from one sports practice to another. What every happened to families spending dinner-time together? I have seen frozen, tired, kids playing sports, sometimes in the dark, with sprained wrists, cuts and bruises, while parents cheer them.

Whatever happened to hugging your kids and telling them that it’s alright just to be a kid and that they don’t have to prove their worth on a sports field? Sports are great, but they can’t rule our lives and influence our decisions.

Families need to spend more quality time together at home and less time competing with the neighbours. If our neighbour’s kids play three sports, our kids need to play four? If our neighbour takes an expensive vacation why do we have to do them one better? Competition and stress are slowly draining the magic out of our families.

We need to hold our kids more. We need to turn off the TV and take out the board games. We need to interact with our kids on a more personal level. We need to talk to them more and even occasionally read to them. Let’s start spending more time with our families and less time driving to malls.

When did iPods replace a good book? Let’s start to de-electrify and simplify ours lives. Let’s put down the cell phones and start talking to our families and friends face-to-face.Less can be better and a lot more fun. — Beliefnet.com (Concluded)