The Harding family of Geneva has one rule for Sunday: nothing scheduled. No sports, no birthday parties, no errands beyond what is truly urgent. They have held the rule for two years.
"It was hard at first," said Sarah Harding, 41. "You feel guilty, like you're depriving your kids of something. But what we noticed after about three months was that our kids started to get good at being bored — and then good at entertaining themselves. That's a skill we'd accidentally taken away from them."