Father and Family Activities™
This month’s father and family activity involves seizing unexpected free moments in your day or week—holes in your To-Do list, if you will—and spending those moments with your children. Dads are busy creatures, but occasionally we get windows of opportunity to chill out, and some of that “chill time” can be spent with our children.
I had such a chance recently, so I loaded our twin toddlers into their bike carrier and pedaled them to the park. They asked me to take them, saying, ‘Park,’ ‘Eagle,’ and ‘Swing!’ Those are their key words for fun, and I obliged them.
The ‘Eagle’ they referred to (which my son cutely mispronounced, ‘Eaglio’), is a giant replica of a bald eagle at the park carved out of a tree trunk. Both kids love that big bird, and they ran to it yelling one of their favorite words: ‘Run!’ They eventually migrated from the eagle to the swings and slides in a different part of the park, and they played and played. Every now and then one of them would say, “Help,” meaning they wanted me to boost them up onto something or rescue them from some precarious position on the playground equipment where they had one leg over something and one leg under something else—you know what I mean.
Getting Started…
Just grab your children the instant you get some free time, and put them in the car (or bike carrier) and haul them to the nearest park or other attraction in their lives. You’ll have a blast, and after all, your To-Do list can wait every now and then.
© Copyright 2009, The Down To Earth Dad, LLC. All Rights Reserved. This article originally appeared in The Down To Earth Dad™ monthly newsletter for parents, schools, and programs (The Down To Earth Dad®, www.DownToEarthDad.org), and it appears here by special permission. No additional copying/reproduction of this article allowed. 1-877-282-DADS.
Seizing Unexpected Free Moments