So it’s “Family Day” in Ontario, also known as Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s ill-planned if not well-intentioned vote grabbing proposal. And I’m sure there are more clever scribes than I with rants against this silly holiday, but I can’t help myself. I too must rant.<\/p>\n
It may be “Family Day” – but, according to one article I read, only about 40 per cent of people in the province are actually entitled to the day off to be with their families. Large stores and malls are closed, municipal and provincial government services are closed, and most civic places like libraries are closed. (Which, to me, begs the question — what the hell are we supposed to do with our families then? Stay locked up in the house for the whole day? That’s a recipe for disaster if I’ve ever heard one!) Beloved works in Quebec, so he doesn’t get the day off. If I weren’t on maternity leave, I’d be working because Federal government employees don’t get the day off, either. So, if I weren’t already off, we’d have to either pay double-time to a daycare provider willing to work on the stat holiday, or use up a personal day and stay home. Not a huge deal for us, but with city-run daycares closed, lots of families will be SOL and scrambling for care, or explaining to unimpressed employers why they need an extra day off.<\/p>\n
Tristan already has a PD day scheduled for this Friday, and both his school and Simon’s nursery school are closed today. What never crossed my mind until late last week was that our nanny is also entitled to today as a paid holiday. Luckily, she took pity on the look of abject terror that must have crossed my face as I realized I’d be facing an entire February day stuck in the house with two rambunctious boys and a 10-day-old newborn, and agreed to my plea that she take the boys for a couple of hours in the morning. <\/p>\n
But what I really want to know is what the heck the province is doing by imposing this “family” time. Are we really so overworked, so overscheduled, so out of touch with each other, that we need the province to step in to save our families? Granted, my boys are still only 4 and 6 years old, but we still have dinner together every single night. We still play together on weekends, and when I’m not ridiculously pregnant or tending to a newborn, we go on lots of family expeditions large and small. We can have fun going to the grocery store or the mall together, and we play games together. Why are the ‘experts’ always lamenting the loss of family time and why do people find it so hard to connect with their families?<\/p>\n
Sometimes, I feel like a bit of a slacker for not having the boys scheduled in more activities. They have swimming lessons in the summer, and last year they went to a week of gymnastics daycamp. I’d’ve had them in skating this winter, if I weren’t pregnant. But that’s only one night a week. Am I at fault for underscheduling and not challenging them more? I don’t think so. Tristan’s report card just came in, and he’s exceeding expectations in reading and mathematics, and meeting expectations in every other area, so I’m confident that he’s being appropriately challenged. Moreso, he loves school, as does Simon. I’d be afraid that pushing too much on them would backfire, and that they might resist and lose their natural love of learning if too much is forced on them.<\/p>\n
I digress. What I wanted to say when I started this little screed is that this whole Family Day thing seems bogus to me. If we can manage Family Time without the province leaning on us and causing us to have to scramble for daycare and employment arrangements, I think most people in the province can do the same thing. <\/p>\n
And seriously? If you really want to tempt me, I’d be a lot less likely to rant if that day off were in the summer time, with green grass and sunshine. February? No thanks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So it’s “Family Day” in Ontario, also known as Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s ill-planned if not well-intentioned vote grabbing proposal. And I’m sure there are more clever scribes than I with rants against this silly holiday, but I can’t help myself. I too must rant. It may be “Family Day” – but, according to one … Continue reading “A little rant on “Family Day””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants-and-rambles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}