The Early Years

I am of the opinion that mothers contribute more care and education with children during the infant stage than do fathers. Women have that built-in nurturing ability that babies need and crave. Don’t get me wrong, fathers are important in the development of children in all their stages of life and should be active in them. As a child becomes more sure-footed and coordinated most fathers are drawn into active play with the child. Between the ages of two and ten most children’s energy level is almost unlimited. Fathers use this time to focus their child’s energy in a useful direction and at the same time show them who is the boss (for the time being). For boys, hitting, throwing, running and kicking can be redirected through football, baseball or soccer. Girls get rid of their nervous energy through pretend tea parties, dress-up, dolls, and ratting on their siblings.
It is healthy for a father and son to go through a type of male bonding that carries over to adulthood. Mother and daughter should become best friends in a similar way. Fathers and daughters sometime go through a “daddy’s girl” stage where they grave a father’s affection and the father basks in the glory. Mothers and sons sometime go through a “momma’s boy” stage and regretfully sometime never stop. That’s another story.
I have more “hands-on” training with girls in view of the fact that I have three daughters. At this writing their ages are fourteen, twenty-one, and twenty-nine. As a result I also have six grandchildren (all boys!). My grandchildren range in age from two to ten years old. I confess that most of my experience with boys has always been short-term. Spoil them and send them back home. You can do that sort of thing with grandchildren and get away with it.
Children-especially boys-must run, throw, kick, jump, giggle, and yell. I have witnessed kids that can do all of the above concurrently. One of my six grandchildren is a good example. Within three minutes of arrival to our house, eighteen month old Cody opened every kitchen cabinet, turned off my TV, chased the cat, opened three doors and tried to climb our stairway leading upstairs. I chased him down, nabbing him I yelled, “JUST STOP!” His movement through our house was a cross between the Roadrunner and the Tasmanian devil on speed.
On the flip side is Austin. He was a curious two years old but was more of a climber and a constant asker of questions. He had what I like to call “dyslexic clumsiness”. Many times I have watched in amazement as Austin ran full speed down a hill with not so much as a stumble. Unfortunately while walking at a normal pace horizontally he could trip over his shadow. Simply astounding! Another source of amusement was Austin’s exploits with our kitchen bar stools. On numerous occasions I have watched Austin climb up and sit on our bar stools but I have yet to see him dismount gracefully. Austin sitting on a stool could be compared to a rider on one of those mechanical bulls; the exception being the stool is stationary! Regardless of whether Austin was eating at our bar or just setting in order to rest, his butt would scoot around on the stool like a pat of butter in a hot pan. Almost like clock-work, within minutes, boom, off the stool he would fall. Thankfully, years have passed and Austin’s abilities have improved greatly.
My niece Lexie had still another aspect of child behavior I call “child stealth” or “silent but deadly”. She was in this stage around the age of three. Lexie wasn’t noisy like her two older brothers. She would walk around checking things out with a smile on her face. She had one of those “OK, what you have done” smiles. One minute she could be setting quietly on the floor playing less than three feet away. The next minute she could disappear from the room unnoticed. Total stealth! I witnessed the phenomenon first-hand one Christmas at our house. Our whole family-Lexie included-were in our living room socializing. All of a sudden I realized Lexie had vanished into thin air. With my powerful “spider senses” I heard a faint metallic noise coming from the direction of our kitchen. Upon further investigation I found Lexie with her hand rummaging through our knife drawer. Being the good uncle, I sprang into action. I quickly closed the drawer (with her hand removed) and calmly said, “No, you can’t play in the drawer”. She didn’t say a word but gave be one of those Linda Blair/exorcist looks and stormed out of the room. Who said, “Sugar, spice and everything nice?”
Being an only child I had no qualms with playing alone. I also got along well with others. I suppose children have exceptionally vivid imaginations and it’s quite easy for a child to enter into his or her own world of fantasy. It can vary in play from a sea battle in the bath tub, to war games with plastic toy soldiers or maybe being a gourmet chief constructing mud pies. The sky is the limit.
My childhood was filled with activities like attaching a string to a June bug’s leg, watching it make loops in the air while I held on to the string and trying not to freak out if it landed in my hair. Summer nights would sometimes find Keith and me doing batting practice near the security light behind my house. One of us would throw a rock into the air above our heads and the other would try to hit a bat as it swooped down at the rock thinking it was a bug. I might add a word of caution here about the batting practice (pun intended). It was not one of the brightest games we could have played. A bat could have bit one of us or the rock could easily have cracked one of our skulls. There were simpler games like catching fire-flies and putting them in jars or flying a kite in a large field near my house. I had no Playstation, Xbox, MP3 player, Gameboy or DVD player. There was no MTV, HBO, ESPN or MySpace to rivet my attention.
Technology is a wonderful thing but at what cost? Modern games have taken away the desire of a child to go outside to play. The lack of activity is making many children obese and lethargic. Some gaming companies are catching on with physically interactive games such as the Wii system. I hope it’s not too late to reverse the trend of effortless play. Of course there is soccer, basketball, football, hockey and many other physically demanding games but what if you don’t do sports. As a last alternative one could swim, take a daily walk, or dare I say, do some household chores.