Reading was nearly always my de facto leisure activity in the school (and university) holidays. The holidays have always represented a chance to escape deep into the pool of history and literature I have loved to soak myself in since childhood – and until recently only exceptional circumstances could change this.
Now, however, with three young children under the age of 7, I cannot count so readily on time to spare for my love of reading. Reading has to be squeezed in wherever possible; writing even more desperately so. As I type this, a 2 year old is trying to cover me with a blanket, while a 4 year olds is asking where she can find another biscuit. I break away from the screen to tell one to stop, the other that she can’t snack now as dinner will be ready soon. Back, now, to my screen.
As a tired parent of young children, I started early on to find that my capacity for sustained concentration on long sentences of text on page was substantially diminished. I would not – could not – turn to TV as a sort of substitute: I broke decisively with that medium as a vessel of entertainment way back in my early 20s. I still love movies – well, some – but TV I have for some time regarded as something like a cesspit in which I do not wish to spend any time. (As an aside, students I teach – who have often discovered this fact – question me with scrupulous zeal and disbelief when I reveal it; I do not know how successful are my attempts to convince them that life beyond TV is, in fact, rather worthwhile).
What medium, then, to seek when pages of text are too much to cope with after a long day, and the humdrum presentism of the TV screen seems too banal to contemplate? The answer, I have often found, lies in Art – and in my growing collection of Art books. It is a brilliantly relaxing activity to sit and take in great works of art, to glance across page after page of image and artistry, to be sucked into the worlds and scenes that great painters of the past have endeavoured to convey.
And, what’s more, this proves a very lovely opportunity for fun with toddlers (and older children too) – who love looking at the paintings, identifying what’s depicted, naming colours and characters they can spy. Earlier this evening my two year old flicked through 25 pages of Degas and 23 pages of Matisse (OK, not exactly an old master) with me and she delighted in much of what she saw, as did I. Not a bad way to relax after a day of work.
ad astra per mundum 
Your sentences conjured sounds of young life and managed chaos (your kids), attempted constraints of wrath (your responses), in a typical scenario of time gobbled family existence, with a beautifully and atypically named TV (the cesspit).
You may find there is even more relief in reach: give away the cesspit and you can declare your home smell-free, like many declare their second hand furniture is from a “pet-free, smoke-free home”. Just, in this case, in exchange for a free TV, the new owners are taking away the cesspit to give you back your pit, minus the cess.
Thank you for the suggestion of engaging with evening artwork, especially after a bruising working day increasingly littered with bureaucratic admin jargon, rather than enriching dialogue. I shall attempt! The naked angels and their “bits” are sure to generate laughter too!
To add to your suggestion, I offer the idea of interspacing reading with listening. We now include the bedtime audiobook of children’s fairy tales alongside the bookshelf options. The audio has its own artistry: the novel tones and accents of an experienced narrator can teleport you more effectively to gaze at that bubbling cauldron, or grimace at that not-so-prince-like frog! Daddy (“Babba”, in our ramshackle) does do voices, but again, I blame the admin for killing my vocal range!
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