Saturday, July 19, 2008

Summer Boredom

The plight of every school age boy. "I'm bored...." Do you think youth is wasted on the young? You have a whole summer to do as you please, kid. I think the summers of Tom Sawyer might have been better than present day summer vacations. Tom and Huck didn't have summer league baseball, or basketball camp, or Wii, or Nintendo DS, or what ever modern cliche you care to use. Tom and Huck had a swimming hole, whitewash, and an apple. They had to make do. They used their imagination and made their own fun. That is what I am trying to encourage the boys to do. They are reading, but reading will only take you so far. You need activities of some sort. But how much should we really cater to the kids? Do we have to schedule activities 24/7, all summer long? I think not. The kids should be able to fend for themselves.
Some of the problem is that the other kids in the 'hood are scheduled 24/7, so the choice of playmates is limited. Left to their own devices, it is only a matter of time before the sibling rivalry surfaces between Coco and Caz. But they have been getting creative. My old army men (you know the ones that some kids used to melt with a magnifying glass) were popular for quite a few weeks. I would find them all over the house, hiding in just about anything. Marble. Good old fashioned marbles were a hit. Admittedly, I never took to them as a kid, but I knew the general concept. The boys and their buddies were recently shooting marbles in the garage.
The kids have it in them to entertain themselves. But if they aren't challenged to do it, they might never know that. Don't get me wrong. Camps have their uses. It is just like anything else these days, they are overused, and often for the wrong reasons.

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