05 Nov Sometimes You Gotta Take a Break
I am writing this week’s column from exotic Richfield, Utah where Ruth and I have spent a couple of days with Trevor and Miranda—our oldest son and his wife—and their 3.4 kids. (Child number 4 is due in April.) We brought our six-year old granddaughter, Emma, as a surprise guest for her cousin, Allie’s, sixth birthday celebration.
Other than the “fallout” from car sickness everything has gone well so far. (Maybe fast food and seven hours of Angry Birds and educational video games were not the best combination for a six year old.)
I am glad we came to celebrate this little milestone with some of our children and grandchildren, and yet it was very difficult for me to drag myself away from the tasks and responsibilities which seem to be piling up at home.
It’s not that I’m scared that the pile will be gone when I get home. I have no illusions about that. But I often struggle with the illusion that setting aside tasks for a short, meaningful break is irresponsible and will result in a much larger pile later on.
It turns out that we human beings of all ages actually need to take short, meaningful breaks from tasks in order to perform better overall. Like athletes in a game we do our best work when we stop periodically to regain our bearings before diving back in.
We can consider this need for breaks or “withdrawal” one of the five universal needs that drive much of human behavior. Here we have already discussed the needs for contact-and-belonging, power, and protection. We’ll discuss the fifth—challenge—another day.
My father wisely found ways to interrupt hard tasks in ways that broke them into bite-sized chunks.
As a little boy Dad would take me to work with him in the garden, yard or garage and work intensely for what seemed like hours (probably 45 – 60 minutes). I am sure it was not easy to get me actively involved in the task in front of us. But once we had been working hard for a while, Dad would declare, “I think we need to go to Mick’s.”
Mick Rounds was the owner of the gas station in Lewisville, my home town. Men in Lewisville, or “Lewisvillains”, often congregated there to shoot the breeze (or something else that sounds like “shoot”) over a soda. It was there I was introduced to the finer things in life, like Pepsi ‘n’ Peanuts, which consists of pouring a package of Planter’s peanuts carefully into the narrow neck of the bottle of Pepsi. (I was informed just last week that the formula for Pepsi ‘n’ Peanuts can be found in the Lewisville 2nd Ward commemorative recipe book.)
I enjoyed that time with Dad, sitting on the soda cooler and listening to men make funny remarks to and about one another, before heading back to the tasks at home. In hindsight I see the wisdom in my father’s breaking up a challenging chore into smaller pieces.
The short intermission made the job more bearable, and I recall that I enjoyed going back to work with Dad all the more after that fun in the middle. In addition to making a difficult tasks easier it reinforced the value of hard labor and a job well done.
Children who learn to take small breaks in the middle of a task are less likely to get discouraged. If the break is small and time-limited they are actually likely to get the overall task done more quickly and more effectively than if they had taken no breaks.
Those children are also more likely to take that skill with them into adulthood.
Of course, without proper guidance, example and reinforcement children can lose track of the task and get caught up in the “break”. That’s why parents need to teach this proactively and not rely on upon instinct to do the teaching. I guess that is one reason God gave us about 18 years with each child before they fly the coop, rather than the three months that starlings get.
I better hurry and get this emailed to Greg, the Editor. After breakfast my 32-year old son and I are going to take a look at how to build a book case for the house. Trevor is a very hard worker, and I could not be happier that he has developed the love for hard work, coupled with pleasant breaks with the people he loves.