Joie de vivre

It makes me upset and sad to hear parents in the summertime speaking of how they long for school to begin. As their children stand beside them they bemoan their sad fate--imagine, having to be around your kids all summer! They tell me how they eagerly look for every summer camp available ("If I'm lucky, they're off to one camp or another for all but three weeks!"). They pack them off to a different Bible school every week. They enroll them in classes and planned activities. Anything, oh, anything to get them out of their hair!

And their children stand there, learning, what? That their parents don't like being bothered with them. They don't wish to be around them. They are a burden and a bother. Come, come, blessed school, so that the little darlings can be packed off by 7:30 and needn't be seen again until late afternoon.

So? They think nothing of it. Almost everyone speaks in this manner. I hear it from parents at the library, but just as much I hear it from parents at church.

Christian parents who behave this way astound me. Or perhaps I'm just an old stick-in-the-mud homeschool product.