Mother Nature, Babysitter

16 Mar 2009

by Christine McLaughlin

in Benefits, Play, Nature, Parenting

Do you remember hose water? Remember the smell and the taste of it? Don't strain yourself, not all of us are old enough to remember when drinking out of a hose wasn't considered poisonous.

Back-in-the-day, my brother and I lived outside. We ran out that door, slammed it behind us and didn't come back until the street lights came on. Parents let nature do the babysitting a lot of the time back then.

We built tree houses, forts and played jungle. Nature taught us about imagination, creativity, and gravity. Kids are raised differently now. While I have no real complaints about Wii, ipods, and hand-held video games, I think kids could use an afternoon of "back-in-the-day" babysitting, once in a while.

While I am busy doing very important grown-up things inside the house, I see my nine-year-old daughter in our backyard behind the pool gate. She's in a tightly crouched position and if I squint, I can see that she is focusing so intently, she's scarcely breathing. Moving closer to the glass door, I watch her placing tiny dried leaves ever-so-carefully in a semi circle around a small pile of twigs, grass blades, and seed heads.

She sits up and back onto her heels, surveying her project, and smiles. Reaching for something on her left, she uses two hands and begins talking. I can't make out the words, but her gentle movements and jaunt of her head leads me to believe she might be explaining something to a friend who isn't actually there.

Then I spot them. I can see who she's talking to. They're roly-polies, and she places each one carefully on its own brittle leaf. It's too much for me to resist and while I don't want to dissolve the story that she's in, I have to know what she's doing.

Sliding open the door, I say, "What are you making?"

She smiles and announces, "It's a restaurant for the bugs!"

Looking at it again, I can see it clearly is.

Nature should babysit more often.