I hate to admit this, but this summer it’s been a challenge to get my boys outside to play. They simply don’t want to at times, and to me that’s just sick and wrong. They are little boys – they should be living outside during the summers.
I’ll ban the tv, ban the Leapsters and force them out of the house. Many times they’ll chase each other around the outside of the house, play on the swing set for 90 seconds and then come back inside. “Noooooooo!” I’ll say and tell them they can’t come back inside for a given number of minutes. And lock the door. Ok, I don’t really lock them out.
We don’t have any neighbor kids their age that are home during the day, and that could be part of the reason for the lack of a desire to play outside, but shouldn’t they be enough for each other? I try to get them engaged in an outdoor activity, giving them ideas to get them started and hope they’ll lose themselves in some imaginary play world. It does happen every once in awhile, but most of the time, they’re barging back into the house asking when the time is up. Sad, isn’t it? Don’t you feel sorry for me?
So one day last week when I “kicked them out” and they didn’t want to come in immediately, I thought I’d scored some kind of victory. And then I discovered what had kept them so quiet and busy:
Well, you know what? It was a victory. Even though I had a lot of cleanup, the boys had a lot of fun and you can’t get much cheaper entertainment than that. Dirt cheap.
Back in the days when thongs were something you wore on your feet, I was a little girl not even in school. My sister was 11 years older than I was and she was my second mom. She would get us dressed and send us outside to play. We lived on a gravel road out in the country and Carol and I would stand on the cave with one thong on each and wave at the cars that went by and honked. We had the friendliest neighbors! Hmmmm, maybe it had to do more with two naked little girls! We have a picture of the two of us cleaning mud off our feet (you did not dare walk in Mom’s house with muddy feet…we were naked but not brain dead!)with table knives. No clue how we got the knives without going in the house, but we’ve got the pictures to prove it!
How about a sand box with dump trucks, etc? We (my 3 sisters and I) always played farm on our driveway. We made fields and drove our tractors, etc. Also another thing my kids liked to do was put blankets on the clothes line and make a tent and pretend they were camping, etc. Summer will soon be over :((
Lois