TIPS FOR YOUR COMMUNITY Interested in slowing your town down? Marcia Marra, who has organized Ready, Set, Relax! nights in Ridgewood, N.J., for five years, offers lessons learned along the road to Zen-ing out: Make it easy for everyone to participate. To ensure the community's fullest support, select a date with as few conflicts as possible. The calendars of all key organizations (schools, sports, religious groups, town officials) should be consulted. Resist overprogramming. Families are encouraged to just relax and enjoy being together - and they can do that in whatever way works best for them. Generate interest with clever reminders. The more eye-catching your "Save the date" posters, the more people take notice. Consider partnering with a local marketing agency. Keep things lighthearted. The goal isn't to teach lessons or values but to raise awareness about overscheduling and to create a dialogue about achieving balance. For more information, visit readysetrelax.org.

But something is rotten in the state of perfection.

Just what is neatly summed up by a hulking Ford Expedition hustling through a changing stoplight. Its plate reads BZZI MOM.

Another way to put it is overscheduled, overburdened and understandably miffed about how life has become a Gordian knot of intersecting events that seldom leaves time for the simplest of family traditions: dinner.

So the people of Poway are striking back.

For the past year, a group of citizens has lobbied leaders of the town's schools, businesses, churches and sports leagues to clear their calendars, so that on the evening of May 22, folks here will be free to do, well, nothing.

No homework, no play rehearsals, no soccer games, no prayer groups, no civic meetings. Just time — 5 to 9 p.m., a window carefully chosen to allow for a few after-school activities — for parents and children to shut down their engines and do whatever it is that people did in lazy times gone by when The Over-Scheduled Child would have been the punch line to a joke, not a well-regarded book.

"There are lots of go-getters in this town, some very involved families with very involved kids," says councilwoman Merrilee Boyack, who came up with the idea for Poway's Family Focus Night. "But the result is that people are just far too busy. So this is a simple wake-up to keep things balanced."

That alarm is sounding beyond Poway.

"Everyone is seeing time through the obsessive Western prism, as something to be grabbed by the scruff of the neck and subdued at all cost," says Carl Honoré, author of In Praise of Slowness, which details evidence of a global rebellion against our fast-paced age, from an Italian movement to slow down sex to a British cellphone company whose ads urge consumers to hang up and enjoy life.

"Whether it's here in London where I live, or in towns in Argentina or Germany, I hear the same question, 'How did things get so out of control?' " Honoré says.

"We seem to have lost the art of doing nothing."

Some people are trying to relearn it. Consider that Poway is following in the footsteps of Ridgewood, N.J., which for the last five years has held a speed bump dubbed Ready, Set, Relax!

And other towns are interested. Not long after the local media picked up on Ridgewood's March 27 event, organizer Marcia Marra received requests for how-to packets from "130 people from all parts of the country, big and small towns alike," she says.

"I'm hopeful. Adults are starting to see that when their lives and their children's lives are scheduled to the hilt, they're really robbing their kids of vital experiences. Just going to the park and playing teaches conflict resolution and other social skills that no adult-organized and -supervised activity can."

Child-rearing experts leave little doubt that there's a dangerous tradeoff going on here.

The pursuit of great grades, athletic trophies and AP credits often means the loss of bonding time that is the glue of family life and a building block for emotional stability, says child psychiatrist Alvin Rosenfeld, co-author of Hyper-Parenting: Are You Hurting Your Child by Trying Too Hard? and The Over-Scheduled Child.

"These days, you decide to pull your kid from the travel soccer team and you're made to feel like it's a hair shy of child abuse. But the truth is, all these kids tend to turn out the same. And what's really going to make a child stand out is developing their creative side, which tends to get ignored when you're just running from one planned event to the next."

Author Honoré had his epiphany while rushing through the Rome airport.

"I spotted an ad for abridged children's stories and thought, 'How great: I can read to my son, but do so a little bit quicker,' " he says with a what-a-fool laugh.

"I sense the tectonic plates are shifting. People want to find that balance again. They want to rediscover their inner tortoise."

Here in Poway, it's more like their inner Norman Rockwell.

In a day spent crisscrossing the town — from the mayor's gleaming new office to a nondescript shopping mall where high-schoolers slap up posters touting the big night — the same comments echo.

Family comes first ... but we have no time to put family first.

Dinner is sacred ... but our schedules are too packed to gather around a table.

Kids are everything ... but somehow giving them everything pushes them away from us.

People are asking whether this wonderful ride that is life hasn't, in fact, become a runaway train. And Family Focus Night is an attempt to guide everyone into the station for a reality check.

"I have three kids, and even limiting each to only one sport, it's still insane," says Amanda Newby, chairwoman of the town's campaign. "We just thought that by giving people an official reason to slow down and be together and do nothing, it would make everyone realize that maybe they should do this more often on their own."

Despite the months of work taken to get teachers to curtail homework assignments, pastors to cancel group meetings and coaches to put off practices, all on the same night, May 22 is by design a no-pressure affair.

As for how those four hours off will be used, there's word that one group of families is headed to a baseball game in San Diego, while another group of friends plans to hit a local park for a barbecue.

Newby is set for an at-home soiree of Yahtzee and other games with the kids. Her friend and fellow coordinator Toni Thomas isn't sure what's on her family's agenda.

"But what I do know," she says, "is that the whole point here is simply to have you do anything, but together."

For some townspeople, the event's goal isn't anything novel. Roxanna Rath, owner of the jewelry shop Artistry in Gold, says her four kids are required to sit for nightly family dinners.

"Oh sure, they try and get out of it — they're kids," she says. "But we just tell them it's important to be together. They do have their own sports events and other things to go to, but we also try to make sure they're also just going outside to play. So maybe this night off will just force some people to think about this who never do."

Not that everyone supports the cause. The city's Little League officials declined to cancel games for fear of fouling up a complex schedule. And others phoned City Hall with their disapproval.

"We got some calls, you know, don't-tell-me-what-to-do type stuff," Mayor Mickey Cafagna says. "Let's face it: Government in some ways always meddles in our lives. So if it's a way that's not harmful, as with this idea, so what?"

Cafagna says fellow mayors from two neighboring towns, Solana Beach and Carlsbad, have expressed interest in following Poway's lead. That's a small victory for on-the-go father of three Jeff Mangum, a school board member and attorney who helped push the initiative.

The hope, Mangum says, is that the night will give parents "a moment to think about whether they're raising a child or a résumé."

That light bulb already has gone off for PTA president Leslie Maher. Her three kids are top athletes whose schedules are always crammed with activities. Since helping organize Family Focus Night, Maher and her husband came to a sudden decision.

"No more All-Star teams for the kids this summer," she says, the distinct sound of relief in her voice. "We're taking three weeks off, heading east and seeing the relatives. Working on this project made me realize just how precious this time with my kids really is."

As for the kids of Poway, what do they think of their parents' wacky idea to carve out one night a year to sit down and break bread?

Michelle Kim, 17, hopes the evening will kick-start her family's failed efforts to "eat dinner together once a week, something that just didn't work out because everybody's always all over the place."

Tanner Konold, 18, is convinced that his peers "who aren't doing well, you know, in school and in life, are those kids who don't have quality family time. I hope this helps them."

But the real bottom line? Says Jason Jensen, 17: "I know I prefer having dinner with my family to doing homework anytime."

Enlarge By Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY PTA president Leslie Maher helped organize Family Focus Night, but she has a conflict: Her son, Conner, is a star pitcher on his Little League team, which has a game Monday evening.