Are we raising lazy kids (08/06/07)

I have never seen anything like it in my life. My brother and I took his children and a friend of theirs to the park and all they wanted to do was sit on a bench. They didn't even sit together. I was astounded, then irritated, then determined that one way or another these kids were going to move.

I got the seven-year-old girl to climb the wall covered in plastic protrusions. She made it a whole two feet off the ground before proclaiming that she was scared. We then had a long conversation where she tried to convince me that she was going to fall and break a bone. I tried to tell her that the spongy surface under our feet made that unlikely but she did not believe me. She asked, "What if I break my spine? What if I break my arm?" or any number of other bones it was possible to break.

I told her that I had broken my arm once in school when I tripped over a little boy and that it healed up just fine. I even pointed out the hospital across the street. She persisted in the "what ifs" until I finally hit on the one thing that got her to try climbing higher - sibling rivalry.

Then it was a matter of convincing her brother that he wasn't too fat and that the wall would hold him. Granted, he is too fat but sitting on a bench at a park wasn't going to fix that. Again, I had to use sibling rivalry to get him to at least try. I told him that his sister could climb higher than he could. To prove me wrong he did climb the wall - once. Then his sister tried it a few more times until she made it almost to the top. Their friend scampered up the wall, across and down the other side without hesitation.

Once I had pried them from their respective benches they did manage to have a little fun. The girl found a swing and a friend and the two boys proceeded to have a sword fight with sticks. I was hoping they didn't hurt each other but at least they were moving. At one point another little boy joined them and it became a three-way sword fight complete with "cheap shots" and fake stabbings. So what if it was violent and dangerous, at this point it was better than having them sit on a bench and do nothing.

I confess that I am not around children that much these days. The only ones I get to see are family. Is this normal to take kids to a park and have them just sit? Have things changed that much since I was young? The other children at the park weren't just sitting quietly.

We didn't go to the park that often when I was little. We also didn't play with grownups unless there weren't any other children around. We rarely sat still unless it was time for Saturday morning cartoons. We ran around and played.

Once we put a board across a swing and made a teeter-totter. It worked great until the other girl fell off and the board smacked me in the face. I cried all the way home. When I got there I was told to be quiet, that there was nothing wrong with me so I hushed. Of course, my broken nose healed crooked but it did heal.

The thought of "what if I break something" never entered our minds when we made our teeter-totter. We never worried about broken bones when we jumped out of the hay mow into a pile of loose hay. We didn't worry about getting electrocuted when we ran water over the electric fence.

We also didn't have to worry about shootings at school, child abductions, drugs or any of the other unpleasant facets of today's world. In our zeal to protect our children from danger it seems we have turned them into a bunch of wimps who are too afraid to even try anything remotely dangerous. Playing video games is about the safest way for a child to pass the time.

Or is it just these two children that are so scared? Are they unusual? How can I show them that the world is full of beauty and possibilities and not just peril and accidents waiting to happen? Maybe getting them up off a bench is a start.[[In-content Ad]]