11 Things I don't do with The Children anymore, and why
1) Skiing: The Girl had a crying meltdown the second day, after a very good day in lessons. Had to threaten to fireman's carry her down the mountain before she'd stand up. Left the slopes at 10:30am. Killed a bottle of Stoli afterwards.
2) Geocaching: No specific incident, but neither The Girl nor The Boy have any interest in doing anything that involves being outside, walking, or looking for stuff...so geocaching is right out.
3) Bike Riding: Last ride to the park (less than a mile) resulted in The Boy crying the entire way there.
4) Hiking: Last trip (3 mile roundtrip) resulted in The Girl wailing the entire time... about 2 hours total. Nonstop. Wailing.
5) Concerts/Theater: The Girl slept through Riverdance, Blue Man Group, and Stomp.
6) The Wild Animal Park: Too many hills, too much walking, animals too far away.
7) The Zoo: Too many hills, too much walking, animals too close.
8) Del Mar Fair: The Boy & The Girl were so grounded from the car ride there that they couldn't play outside their rooms for a week afterwards. The Boy then alternately cried and tried to bargain the entire time we were there.
9) Museums: Took them to the USS Midway, phenomenal museum combining aircraft, the sea, and recent US history. Tied to our family...parents did arrested landing & catapult shot on the Midway. Also, we rented it for their 50th. Took kids. Went to flight deck. Surrounded by planes. Girl found a bench, sat down, started texting. Never got up till we left.
10) Movies: We planned to see Happy Feet with Nana & Papa in Minnesota. We spent the day at the Children's Museum in Minneapolis, then stopped at McDonald's for dinner. On the way to the theater, they started fighting over the happy meal toy...the one that they both had. It escalated. As we approached the intersection where "straight" was the theater and "left" was Nana & Papa's. About 2 minutes early, I warned them that they needed to get it under control because, if they didn't, we're going to skip the movie. The escalation continued, and we turned left. We still haven't seen Happy Feet.
11) Red Bull Air Races: My personal, saddest favorite. The Air Races were on San Diego Harbor. We found a spot on a pier where we had a great view of 300 mph airplanes pulling 9g's around pylons, flying 25 ft above the water. Neither The Boy nor The Girl would look up. Read that again. They wouldn't look up. Stared at the pier. For a half hour. I'm not exaggerating.
These are all true stories. The Girl is 11, The Boy 8. They are both generally good kids. Their relationship with each other is terrible (she loathes him, he adores her - this is another blog) but when they are not together they are generally good to have around. Unless we want to actually DO anything. Then, all bets are off.
I think it may be a thing of the times... kids today seem to be pretty scheduled, so maybe they don't want to do anything because they are always so busy. Maybe we are choosing the wrong things to do. So far, we have been unable to determine how we can fix it. Any ideas on what we can do to help The Children be interested in DOing things?
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It's not just you.. kids nowadays are so lazy and don't want to do anything.
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