Working on Vacation

An office-supply company just came out with a survey showing that about 43 % of office workers work on vacation, up from 23% in 1995.  41% of the workers surveyed said it was their laptop computers that helped them do this.  On top of all that working on vacation, the survey found that only 61% even use all the vacation time they have coming to them.

This might be too incendiary (or hypocritical) a suggestion to make on a blog, but I can't help but think that this has to be one of the major contributors to the breakdown of the family.  I speak as someone who is finding herself having more and more difficulty resisting the siren call of the Internet, both on vacations and even during evenings at home.   Sure, now I can be in the same room with my kids while I'm checking my e-mails, with The Wiggles singing and dancing in the background, but I'm not singing and dancing with my kids.  (Of course, that might just be the effect of age, or of just being sick to death of the jingles of those four goofy Australians and their irritating furry friends, rather than the fact that I'm working on my laptop.)

I recently met a school psychologist, and asked her what the major problem was that she was seeing in elementary school kids these days.   She said it was anger.   Could our kids be getting mad because we are all spending less and less time giving them our total, undivided attention, even when we're not at work?

Lisa