We can build a bug
“we could make a bug, if we wanted too”. This little thought was presented to me this morning by my oldest son Owen. He is 3 and a dreamer. He brings me this little ideas more often than I can count. Usually its something like, “I’m gunna go start a fire in my room”. I then tell him we don’t play with fire and he reminds me its pretend, dad. This exchange usually ends with me walking in his room with either all his clothes or all his books in one big pile. I then ask him what he was thinking he was doing. He responds with, I built a fire.
What I see as a mess I’m going to have to clean up, he sees as a roaring fire. This got me thinking, does this mean everytime I tell him to stop climbing up his dresser I’m really just interupting his Everest ? Now I know I just don’t want him to fall of his dresser and get hurt, but am I killing his dream to do so ?
I tried thinking back to when popsicles sticks taped to the feet of my gi Joe were no longer skis, when no matter how hard I tried I didn’t feel like I was deep sea diving when I was just in the bathtub. What I came up with made me worried. It was after 3rd grade. More importantly, it was after just a few years in public school. After the third grade I would have to really try to make believe. Using my head wasn’t enough, I needed props now. Before I could shoot laser beams out of my fingers, now I needed nerf toys to just sword fight. Alot of my friends seemed to have this same problem. The only coralation we all seemed to share was school.
When I realized this I jumped online. Searching for anyone else who had brought up this problem, and what they may have found. If I was to make a link for even one out of every five posts I found on this, this blog would be very, very long. If you were to look at just one example, go to YouTube, search for TED. And check out the video at the top by sir ken Robinson.
After I whent through just about most of what I could find on the net, I decided to take the boys to the park. There was a big windstorm the day before and lots of downed tree limbs. So we did the only thing we could, we built the best damn fort in the park. Not that there was anyone else there building forts. But if there was a fort built after ours, it wouldn’t touch it. Just look at the pic above.
So in closing, did we build a bug ? I think we did. It just looked like a fort and smelled like the grass. And felt like good memories do. It’s funny, a 3 yr old told me we could build a bug if we wanted too. He was rite.
“we could make a bug, if we wanted too”. This little thought was presented to me this morning by my oldest son Owen. He is 3 and a dreamer. He brings me this little ideas more often than I can count. Usually its something like, “I’m gunna go start a fire in my room”. I then tell him we don’t play with fire and he reminds me its pretend, dad. This exchange usually ends with me walking in his room with either all his clothes or all his books in one big pile. I then ask him what he was thinking he was doing. He responds with, I built a fire.
What I see as a mess I’m going to have to clean up, he sees as a roaring fire. This got me thinking, does this mean everytime I tell him to stop climbing up his dresser I’m really just interupting his Everest ? Now I know I just don’t want him to fall of his dresser and get hurt, but am I killing his dream to do so ?
I tried thinking back to when popsicles sticks taped to the feet of my gi Joe were no longer skis, when no matter how hard I tried I didn’t feel like I was deep sea diving when I was just in the bathtub. What I came up with made me worried. It was after 3rd grade. More importantly, it was after just a few years in public school. After the third grade I would have to really try to make believe. Using my head wasn’t enough, I needed props now. Before I could shoot laser beams out of my fingers, now I needed nerf toys to just sword fight. Alot of my friends seemed to have this same problem. The only coralation we all seemed to share was school.
When I realized this I jumped online. Searching for anyone else who had brought up this problem, and what they may have found. If I was to make a link for even one out of every five posts I found on this, this blog would be very, very long. If you were to look at just one example, go to YouTube, search for TED. And check out the video at the top by sir ken Robinson.
After I whent through just about most of what I could find on the net, I decided to take the boys to the park. There was a big windstorm the day before and lots of downed tree limbs. So we did the only thing we could, we built the best damn fort in the park. Not that there was anyone else there building forts. But if there was a fort built after ours, it wouldn’t touch it. Just look at the pic above.
So in closing, did we build a bug ? I think we did. It just looked like a fort and smelled like the grass. And felt like good memories do. It’s funny, a 3 yr old told me we could build a bug if we wanted too. He was rite.
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