Hot days, idle worship

Why are holidays packed with activities? Vacations should ideally mean less stress and more fun for kids and for parents

- SEEMA GOSWAMI

Last week, I met a friend with school-going children for coffee. Seeing her look more frazzled than usual, I asked what was worrying her. It's the school holidays, she confessed. And she was going mad, coordinating the different activities that her son and daughter were signed up for. "I can either do my job," she complained. "Or spend my day ferrying them from one place to another. I can't do both!" She is far from unusual in this. Most of the young kids I know spend their summer holidays going from tennis lessons to ballet classes, fitting in the odd tuition for physics or maths in between ("It's their board year, you know?"). And their parents end up going slowly mad trying to keep their children on time for their 'summer activities'.

You can call this insane scheduling a lot of things.

But what you can't do is call this a holiday.