Poor Atwat....

[calalily]

I totally agree with you.
I have to kick my 10 year old out of the house and lock the doors to get him to go outside.
And yes, I do this...lol. He don't need to be in house all day watching TV or playing video games.

I just kick them out of the house.  If they try to fall into bad habits, I ban them from the house for an extra 15 minutes. 

..<snip>.....all they wanted to do all day long was sit inside and play video games. I'd basically have to drag them outside for a few hours every day, and then they'd do nothing but whine about how bored they were. It was sad.

That's what a lot of kids do - they sit inside and play video games.  It is a bit sad, and totally wasteful - not to mention they get used to doing nothing.

My little ones love it outside.  I do have a friend though who suggested that my son use a Wii to get exercise.  She said that is how her son gets exercise.  I suggested she buy him a bike.

Nutsy. Absolutely nutsy. What do they expect their kids to do once they don't have a Wii, and how are they training them to exercise when they're older or bored with Wii games?

[ChaosInAMinor]

My younger step brother is 12 (real and pescado-age) and he can sit in his room and play video games for hours. It's terrible. When I was a kid (not long ago at all), my older brother, older sister and I were always out playing together. We'd build forts out of old sheets and the dining room chairs, run around the neighborhood pretending we were a band of superheros that associated with flowers (I was Chrissy Chrysanthemum and my sister was something Rose, while my brother turned up his nose and said the game was too girly for him)...we'd make up these elaborate stories...it was a lot of fun.  That and my siblings were both gullible, so I could always get them to eat questionable things we found on the ground or what not.

[Plum]

That's weird.  My siblings have video games in the house and TVs in their bedrooms and they still manage to spend most of the day outside.  They love video games but I guess they just don't have the attention span for it.

[DaBuschckah]

I was one of those 'free range' children, who ran around the neighborhood from dawn til dusk with the neighbor kids...running to someone's house to eat lunch...ah, that was fun. Dangerous too, as I look back on it. We even played outside at night on the weekends. That was the only time when parents DID watch the kids--after dark. I loved those days. Using cardboard boxes, duct tape, three wagons and a bike, we made a train one day. With seats for the stuffed animals too Imagination ruled in those days!

It makes me sad to see my ten year old cousin and her four year old niece sit inside all day watching shitty cartoons (As an animator, I love cartoons, but only the good ones ) and playing videogames. Its sad. And the parents wonder why their kids aren't tired at bedtime.... *shakes head* I was babysitting them once, and got out some play-dough--the four year old asked "what does it do?" and I wanted to scream. Or cry...

[Plum]

"What does it do?"?!?!

That is just plain depressing.  That should count as child abuse!

[ChaosInAMinor]

Barrgh, kids these days. My friends, siblings, and I all had such huge imaginations growing up because our parents didn't let us become couch potatoes.

[Phelim]

I liked to build switchback roads into the sides of the sand pit (a real one, that is, with the always popular danger of death by sand-avalanche, as it was pretty steep), set lit firecrackers along the way, and see if my metal Matchbox-type cars could roll past them before the suckers exploded.  It was great fun.

And so were marbles and a patch of dirt.  Or trees, for climbing.  Or fields, for wild strawberry hunts, or blackberry brambles, or....

Or even better, crossing the river from the sand pit to the gravel pit to have mud fights!  I distinctly recall straggling back to the house one fine summer day with my best like-a-sister friend, both of us covered in mud, and my father taking a look, shaking his head, and pointing at the garden hose.

[Plum]

We all sound very old. 

[Astonished lemons]

You guys arent old.

My mom locked us outside everytime she wanted quality time with either my dad, a romance novel or some rum, so we had all sorts of imagination games going on. We had a hole in our fence, so we'd always play with our next door neighbor, and we'd pretend we were 'lost in the jungle', or 'the floor is lava', or 'Circus gymnastics', or my favorite 'Hide-and-seek-with-no-time-outs-unless-its-really-really-serious-this-time-okay-Laura-we-mean-it-you'll-automatically-be-it-if-you-do-what-you-did-last-time-again"

Plus we have lots of cats, so thats oodles of entertainment right there.

[Tabby]

  My mom would always send us outside, we weren't allowed to come in until dark, and we got hosed off before we were allowed to come back inside.    We had to stay in our backyard, but we could always have friends over if they promised to stay outside too. LOL The only reason my three year old isn't thrown outside everyday (she would LOVE it btw) is because our apartment doesn't have a fence, and our back porch is on the second floor with only a set of spiral stairs keeping her from falling to her demise. 

[HeartOFire]

We are not old, we are lucky.

[SoggyFox]

Those people make me sad, SoggyFox. I just look at them and think "But...don't you know how to have FUN?!"

My grandmother is like that, though at least, being much closer to 90, its okay, but I don't get her at all.  Her mother used to get chewed out by her for giving me snickers bars after I'd gone to bed, and she'd save egg cartoons for when we'd go visit, so we could make all sorts of silly things.  And her daughter [ my mom], who might only listen to classical and folks music, even as a kid, still has a wicked sense of humour and is silly [ and plays video games].

But yes, I feel sorry for people like that - life is for living, being silly and being imaginative.  I remember the fencing matches with sticks, hording up left over school stuff from teachers and playing school in the summer, and making houses with raked up leaves [ well, more like floorplans ].  Also spent hours wandering through the woods, riding my bike and stuff - wish I'd never stopped, I've gotten so round and flabby.

[Plum]

We sound old, I say.  My grandpa used to say this crap to me after I got an SNES.

[Saraswati]

Oh my god, Atwa.. I christen your thread 100 pages long.. quite an honour honey. Puts you up there with Carla Niven..

[Astonished lemons]

Im reserving this post here so that I can be on the 100th page once I have something interesting to say.

Woo?