TED Talks · How to slow down

Family

Bedtime stories are meant to be read at a gentle pace. But I was way too fast to slow down with the brother's grim.

Level: A2 · 58 sentences

Transcript

1. Bedtime stories are meant to be read at a gentle pace.
2. But I was way too fast to slow down with the brother's grim.
3. So I zoomed through the old fairy tales, skipping lines, paragraphs, entire pages.
4. My version of Snow White was so fast, it had just three dwarves in it.
5. What happened to Grumpy?
6. My son would ask.
7. What should have been the most relaxed, intimate,
8. tender, the most magical moment of the day?
9. when a father sits down to read a story to his son,
10. was instead a battle of wills, a war between my speed and his slowness.
11. My wake-up call came when I caught myself ogling a collection of one-minute bedtime stories.
12. My first thought was, what a great idea!
13. I need that book right now!
14. Drone delivery! But my next thought was very different.
15. I said to myself, whoa.
16. Has it really come to this?
17. I never bought that book of one minute stories, thankfully.
18. But the fact that I even considered buying it tells us a lot about family life these days,
19. about how fast and busy it has become.
20. Why has family life sped up so much?
21. There are many reasons.
22. Every society reshapes childhood in line with its own priorities and hangups.
23. Adults feel rushed and busy, so we end up passing that on to our kids.
24. The world is also more competitive than it used to be,
25. and that cranks up the pressure to push children harder and harder.
26. Kicking a ball around in the park with a few friends isn't good enough anymore.
27. Your child has to be in a soccer clinic with a professional coach.
28. Not every family can afford to pile on the extracurricular activities.
29. Those that cannot feel left behind, yet those that can often go too far.
30. Extracurriculars can be wonderful, but only up to a point.
31. Trouble comes when kids are over-programmed,
32. when life is an endless dash from activity to activity,
33. when the main purpose of childhood is to be busy or to build the perfect college application.
34. If your children's schedule is routinely sending them and you into meltdown,
35. that may be a sign that you all need to put on the brakes.
36. The COVID-19 pandemic forced many families into hours of unscheduled togetherness,
37. shedding a light on both the upsides and downsides of busy lives.
38. Clearly, all that time away from friends, school,
39. and extracurriculars stressed out kids and parents alike.
40. And yet, some families found a silver lining in their slowed down schedules.
41. The morning routine was more relaxed.
42. Without the usual tug of war of kids dragging their heels and parents shouting,
43. hurry up, there was time to bake or play a game together.
44. Now, some families are looking for ways to save the baby,
45. lighter schedules, while throwing out the bathwater, pandemic isolation.
46. One way is to set aside a day each week with no schedule activities.
47. That is something we do in my family.
48. Another is puzzling.
49. Every so often, we spread out a thousand-piece jigsaw on our kitchen table.
50. It might be a cover of the New Yorker magazine or a depiction of Shakespeare's London.
51. Whatever the image, the puzzle soon becomes an oasis of slowness,
52. an escape from the hurly-burly of daily life.
53. Sometimes one person tackles the puzzle alone,
54. or two or three of us sit around the jigsaw together, chatting when we feel like it.
55. Yes. I know there's a whole world of speed puzzling out there, but that's not us.
56. We are never in a hurry.
57. No one watches the clock or races anyone else.
58. We're too busy slowing down.