I read an article a couple of days ago about how differently kids are growing up compared to twenty years ago. I may have been raised when the whole “tech” boom came about, but I knew a life before it existed. I played outside on the cul-de-sac every evening until it was dinner time with the neighborhood kids. We played capture the flag, hide and seek, street hockey, and handball against any flat piece of wall that we could find. We even had a “secret” mailbox under a fist-sized rock, where we would leave strategically folded handwritten notes for one another.

What do kids do now?

Kids now have an abundance of electronics. They have handheld devices in every size imaginable. They have cell phones in first grade and email each other instead of using a pen and paper. No physical interaction is needed since they get all the entertainment they need by staring mindlessly at a vivid 60″ TV screen.

The things that do still exist, however, are MASH, paper fortune tellers, and Pokemon. Apparently, Pokemon keeps rebooting itself to every generation. I only know this because I work with kids.

I remember receiving a thirty day free trial of AOL in the mail every couple of weeks and begging my parents to register it so that we could go on the internet. Back then, there was only dial-up. I’d sit in front of my dinosaur sized monitor and cross my fingers, hoping that my connection would go through the first time. If not, I’d try again and hear the “deee doooo deee.” Okay, that’s a terrible impression, but you get the point.

It is SO important for kids to get out and experience nature. Seriously. Kids now are missing out on life. My DB even missed out on life– He’s never flown a kite or learned how to ride a bike! I’ve recently discovered that he lived quite a different childhood than I did.

…mostly because my dad grew up dirt poor in Vietnam and what he saw as “safe” for a child would give my DB’s mom a heart attack. But, I had the best childhood ever. My dad fit four kids on a moped and we went on donut runs (Yes, totally unsafe and probably a little illegal, but the donut shop was literally around the corner from my house, so don’t freak out too much. It’s not like we went on the freeway like that).

We also got to stand up through the sun roof while my dad drove around and sit in the trunk of the minivan with the door open (again, it’s just through the neighborhood so calm down!). We played outside in the rain by folding paper boats, putting them in the gutter, and chasing them down the street to see how far they’d go in the rainwater. We hammered bottle caps into flat pieces and used them to play as POGs.

Don’t get me wrong— I didn’t grow up like a poor child in Vietnam. I had a bike and plenty of toys, but I learned how to have fun with what I had. My dad built us a two story tree house in the our backyard that had a tunnel which connected to my parents’ bedroom balcony. Too good to be true? Here’s a picture of it in the works (from the mid 90′s):

He even built a play room just for us with a climbing ladder, swinging monkey bar, and hammock. He did all of these things for us because there was no PlayStation, no Gameboy, and no Netflix. We had to entertain ourselves with what we had.

So thanks, pops, for always keeping us so well entertained!

Now, readers. Promise me you’ll take your kids outside and play with them. Take them on adventures! Teach them how to make a really good paper airplane (that’s my specialty at work). Heck, bring them into the kitchen and make this cookie together. It’s a simple chocolate cookie. No frills, no millions of add-ins, just plain ol’ chocolate.