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Spring is in Their Hair: The Joys of Making Them Play Outside |
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| April 23, 2008
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In my neck of the woods weather is relatively mild, but even so, the rain and mist and gory grey makes a person (no matter how tall) want to curl up with a good Diego episode and eat a cookie. With all the evidence that our kids are the fattest, least active, most addicted to television since the Goddess invented children, most parents are plagued with worry. Are they getting enough exercise? Eating too many McNuggets? Do they realize how much TV the ‘rents watch after they go to bed? Will they (please God) do as we say and not as we do when it comes to being physically healthy? Fat chance. Your only hope is warmer weather, or at least a cessation of the sleet and hail and snow. But spring is a season for change and renewal, hopefully heralded by the call of weary independence-encouraging parents everywhere: “Go outside and play! Did you hear me??!!” Maybe your neighborhood is the kind that requires you to go with them every time they step a little tootsie out of doors (if this is the case, you have my sympathy). Or maybe, you’re lucky (or oblivious) and with relative assurance you can send them out on their own. Again, the joys of older children cannot be over-emphasized. Advertisement Whatever the size of your yard, garage, vestibule, well-ventilated cardboard box -- open up those doors and windows and cobble together some natural wonders for your Natural Wonders. You’ll be glad you did. They are easy as 1-2-3 and luckily require substantially less energy than home school, or extended breastfeeding, or listening to your spouse discuss in excruciating detail the life cycle of the average mollusk. Here are three fun games for you to teach your kids, just in time for spring:
Perhaps they haven’t yet discovered that Nature is Beautiful and Wondrous. And perhaps you’ve subconsciously communicated your fear of anything akin to the Wild by screaming every time you see a dot the shape of a bug of unknown origins. Never fear. YOU don’t have to love nature in order for them to be out in it. When all else fails try this (and obviously it only works if your kids are still reasonably young, or old enough to be doing drugs). Tell them that outside there is a magical fairy land where little fairy people dance and play and swim in chocolate fountains and wait for little children to visit. This special magical land is outside and kids can only find it if they look hard for at least an hour (which Mommy and Daddy will willingly time for them). Tell them it’s important to believe. If after the hour is up, they get mad because they haven’t found the magical city of fairies, tell them they can try again tomorrow. And so on from there. At the very least, hide some chocolate kisses around the yard to give them some kind of hope that the world isn’t a huge empty meaningless void of broken promises. Nothing like bribing them with food to ensure they become healthy active outdoorsy adults – the kind we see here in the West – with bad taste in clothing and huge muscular calves, riding bikes to work no matter what the weather, tight nether regions distracting drivers everywhere with the kind of contract-release fluidity a person in a mini-van full of screaming children despairs of ever seeing up close and personal again. Ahem. But seriously, outdoors is good. Good for you and them. And if you start now to train them, by summer you’ll be able to watch an entire episode of “Sex and the City” without interruption or annoying questions like “Mommy, what is a slut?” | ||
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