Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Child Labor

First thanks to everyone that's been commenting  :-)  If I was more tech savvy I could learn to comment back--LOL.

So this weekend, one of my cousins brought his kids out to the farm to run and play and be creative and get dirty--wait isn't that what all kids are supposed to do?  LOL.  Anyway, J was building fence and welding up the rods and whatever else he was doing (see pic below--looks pretty good huh?).  Well the youngest boy (he's about 5) was all excited about the welding hat and what was going on, and trying to help pick up rod (which was about 2-3 times the size of him).  I asked J, isn't there anything he could help with?  Sure enough there were 6 inch pieces laying around that had been chopped off that needed to be picked up.  I told E, you want to help--see those pieces, pick them up and put them in Uncle J's truck.  Boy he was a fast little mover--the expression on his face was priceless.  He thought he was one of the "big boys" helping with the fence.  The video games, DVDs's, movies, TV, etc were forgotten the moment he threw one of those pieces in the truck.  It was great! 

I do think its important that kids get to work and feel some sense of accomplishment, however small the project maybe, they will learn from it.  With all the talk of kids having ADD, ADHD, learning problems, erratic behavior, I think the simplest solution would be actual work and creative play.  *Not to minimize learning disabilities by any means*  Those kids made up games and played outside for hours, and the best thing--they want to come back --I say bring it on--there's always plenty of outdoors to spread around  :-)

J is a great welder!  I'm married to such a handy-man  :-)

4 comments:

  1. AMEN. Like you said so well, not to minimize true learning challenges, but a lot can certainly be said for active work and play. OUTDOORS as much as possible, that's my philosophy. Kudos to you both for finding a way that little cutie could be helpful and have some safe fun. : ) Great looking pipe fence too! I think we could use one here.

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  2. The same goes for adults. Life is much sweeter if you work as well as play. There is nothing quite as satisfying as getting a big job done. The relaxing afterwards is sooooo much better. I like to get up, get it done and move onto other things.

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  3. Oh I so agree!!! We were having a similar conversation a couple of weeks ago about all the kids with peanut allergies... you don't see kids in the ghetto allergic to peanuts... ;)

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