The Greatest Gifts

 

The two greatest gifts you can give your children are time and love.  But they won't enjoy that as much as a remote control car or Hatchimal.  So how do you buy presents that incorporate time and love?  Easy.
Philip's philosophy, or Philiposophy, is to steer clear of batteries.  I have noticed in my various encounters with children that toys that need batteries or chargers honestly don't get used very often.  This can be tricky, considering that all the items the younger two boys want for Christmas need batteries or chargers.  I think back to last Christmas, when I first started with the boys.  The youngest got a remote control car.  He loved that car!  It was rechargeable.  How awesome is that?!  But the young boy didn't know what to do with himself while the car was charging.
Once the car was charged, it would be driven around for about fifteen minutes until the battery died.  Back to the charger.  Back to waiting.  This continued for days until, finally, the remote control car was forgotten.
Toys that don't have rechargeable batteries are even worse!  Between searching for screwdrivers and the correct sized battery, the kids usually find something to play with.  Or maybe they don't even worry about changing the batteries because it's just too much work.
Steer clear of batteries.  How is this showing your child time and love?  It's not.  At least one person usually ends up frustrated trying to get a toy working again.
The best way to show your children time and love is to buy toys or items that promote imagination.  The six-year old loves building things.  And he tends to not use the instructions.  He just creates whatever he wants.  Earlier this week, he and I were playing with Legos.  There was a lot of dialogue between the different mini figures and a lot of creativity in the building.  And this fun lasted for almost two hours.  Time.
And I was there playing with him.  Love.
The six-year old also has a favorite stuffed animal named Wolfey.  Wolfey is a little shy, but he will answer yes or no questions by nodding or shaking his head.  This is imagination.  And stuffed animals (usually) don't need batteries or chargers.  You can talk to them all day long, if you want to.
I could go on for a while about the best toys to get your children.  But I won't.  Just remember that time and love is all a child really needs.  And you won't find that in the electronics section.

No Tech Day

Last Friday, the boys and I had a No Tech Day.  After struggling to get the teenager out of bed ("What's the point?  I might as well sleep all day.") and listening to the younger boys complain about being bored (after a grueling four minutes), it was time to step up my game.
First came Twister.  The spinner got broken, so that didn't last very long.  Next came wrestling.  That's always fun.  Until it goes too far.  So, it was time to build a fort.
We gathered the chairs from the dining room and made a square.  I had a top sheet ready, but the boys insisted on using every blanket in the house.  The fort we built was huge!  Once the fort was finished we played a game the boys called "Slenderman".  They had thirty seconds to get from the fort to a hiding place.  I then had about two minutes to find them before they got back to the fort.  We had a blast!  Until one of the dogs jumped on top of the fort.  No worries there, though.  The boys fixed it up and made it even stronger than before.
Lunchtime came along while the boys were playing Bop-it or building with Jenga blocks.  We had had such a good day by that point that I decided we could watch one movie, taking a break from the No Tech Day.  After two hours of Jim Carrey fighting thugs while wearing a green mask, we continued our No Tech Day.  Back to Bop-it and Jenga.
After a while, the 11-year old brought out his electric ball.  You know what I'm talking about.  One of those globes that has electricity running through it.  When you put a finger on it, the electricity follows your finger.  He set it up in the middle of the fort.  We spent a good hour and a half in the fort shocking each other.  The boys would put one hand on the globe and use the other hand to go up and down my forearm.  At one point, one the boys asked what was burning.  It was my arm hair.  It smelled awful, but the boys thought it was the coolest thing.  It was actually fairly hot.  Not cool at all.  But, again, we had a blast.
My boss, who I just call 'mom', got home while we were working on MadLibs. The boys started complaining to her about the long, boring, torturous day I had put them through.  But I know better.  They may not realize it, but they enjoyed themselves.  We had rough patches throughout the day, such as calling each other names and hitting each other, but I also saw the boys bonding, which doesn't seem to happen much when I'm around.  They told each other jokes, talked about their trip to the beach they had recently returned from.  They even discussed politics!  Imagine that!  A 13- and 11-year old discussing the state of the Union.  I thoroughly enjoyed my tech free day with these fine young men.  I'm kind of tempted to do it again.  Heaven help those boys!

A World Without Imagination

The past few visits with my nephew have been a blast.  He's at a stage in life where everyone is a superhero.  When he is visiting, we fight crime, watch superhero shows, play with masks and action figures, and serve justice...all before nap time.  Playing pretend is always so much fun.  I love my nephew's wild imagination.  I don't get to use my imagination much anymore.

As a child, I had a crazy imagination.  I didn't ask my parents very many questions.  I just made up reasons for things.  For example, one question I do remember asking my mom was how the street lights know when to turn on in the evening and off in the morning.  She said something about computers.  I got it in my head that there were tiny people sitting inside those street lamps playing solitaire on their computers until it was time to light up the neighborhood.

I also remember playing The Floor is Lava with my siblings.  We would gather all our pillows and blankets and jump from pillow to pillow onto our lava resistant ship built from blankets.

While working with kids for the last eight years (Cub Scouts, Primary, babysitting), I've begun to notice a decrease in imagination.  I've witnessed children pretending, but only what they've seen on TV.  They rarely come up with their own stories.  They will, in fact, recite full lines from movies and TV shows.

What does this say about today's children?  Are they spending too much time in front of the television?  How about iPads and Tablets?  The games they are playing are preprogrammed to work a certain way.  No need for imagination there.  And even public schools are cutting back on teaching children how to be imaginative.  If a school district is running low on money, what is usually the first thing to be cut?  Music and art, where children are free to express themselves.

What can we do about this?  Unplug the kids.  Give them an arts and crafts project.  Let them play make believe.  Read to them.  Through books, children can be taken to a new world that they have to picture in their minds, assuming we're reading a novel and not a picture book.  

A world without imagination is a world I don't wish to be a part of.  Without imagination there would be no future.  No new ideas or inventions.  Nothing would ever change.  So next time I'm pretending to be a superhero with my nephew, I'm going to tell him that his greatest super power is real.  Imagination is a super power.  Imagine that.