MARK MY WORD; PLARENTS FIND IT TOUGH TO LATCH ONTO LEISURE TIME

For moms and dads, the best leisure time is a good night's sleep.

Parents know all about rush hour.

It's that time of day when they rush out the office door so they can pick up their kids before the day-care center closes.

Rushing around seems a major part of parenting today, whether it is picking them up at the end of the day or getting them to school in the morning.

You also have to find time to shuttle your children to whatever fast-food restaurant is offering the best kid-meal toys that week.

Then there is dinner to make, clothes to wash, dishes to do and children to bathe.

As a parent, I was surprised to learn the other day that two time-management gurus have concluded that most Americans have more free time today than at any other point in the past three decades.

These time guys studied the daily routines of 10,000 Americans over the past 30 years.

I don't recall these guys hanging around my house. If they had, I would have put them to work.

Experts John Robinson and Geoffrey Godbey have written a book in which they insist Americans are enjoying an average of close to 40 hours of leisure a week, up from 35 hours in 1965.

The bad news, they say, is that all this leisure time is scattered throughout the week.

As an often-harried dad, I have trouble figuring out where all that leisure time is hiding. I don't even have a leisure suit.

Joni and I get tired just trying to keep up with our children. For us, the best leisure time is a good night's sleep.

The free-time experts say Americans spend the largest share of their free time -- almost 15 hours a week -- watching TV.

For parents, this isn't necessarily leisure time.

Joni and I don't count it as leisure time when Becca watches the Abbott and Costello "Hold That Ghost" movie over and over again.

I don't know about moms, but dads like television because it has a remote control that allows you to zip through the channels without really watching anything.

Children, unfortunately, don't come with remote controls or even on-off switches.

At any rate, it's tough to sit still when your children are bouncing around.

Changing diapers isn't leisure time, at least not for parents. I can't speak for Bailey, who might view it as a recreational activity for all I know.

Giving our children a bath isn't a leisure time activity unless we throw in plenty of bubbles.

Admittedly, I've found more time in recent months to play store and restaurant with Becca.

When it comes to leisure time, there's nothing like ordering plastic food from your daughter-turned-waitress.

The food is never bad and you don't have to leave a tip. Well, maybe a kiss or hug to go.

The time trackers say that for every hour we spend in front of the tube, we spend less than four minutes doing cultural activities like flossing our teeth.

At our house, hide-and-seek with the children counts as a cultural activity, as do impromptu sing-alongs.

Still, it's hard to calculate all that leisure time.

I know one thing. I don't have time to read about time, unless it is in a children's book that can be read and reread in no time.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.