This Mother of 3 Would Prefer a 9-Month August

Re “Craving That 9-Month Break,” voices, Aug. 31:

Maybe Robin Schoettler Fox can’t come up with ideas for things to do with kids in August, but, as another mother of three, I cherish the time when we don’t have to take kids to school, attend sporting events and juggle all the other activities.

The list of cleaning chores Schoettler Fox rattles off take only a day to do, and we do our back-to-school shopping in a single day as well (while making it a fun outing with lunch somewhere special).

On the other 29 days of August we visited the library, toured a fire station, read books in our favorite doughnut shop, played in local parks, explored museums, hiked around zoos, had adventures at Disneyland, walked along beaches, saw movies together, and ran out of free days long before we ran out of ideas of things to do with them.

Our problem is not that August doesn’t have enough scheduled structure; the trouble for us is that more months aren’t like August. Somewhere along the line it became popular to keep kids busier than the CEOs of most major companies. I don’t know if that’s because of the day-care problems encountered when both parents work or because parents wanted more time to themselves or what. But I wouldn’t trade the downtime I have with my kids for anything in the world, and I like to think my kids feel that way as well.

Linda A. Malcor

Aliso Viejo