All the little people

It wasn't that long ago we were camped in IN and a boy on the playground called Oliver a "butt face." They had been playing at the park with another little friend when this boy told them he could beat them all at basketball and so the conversation went until they all ran home crying words of "bully."

"Did you feel like you couldn't play or that he had power over you?"
"No."
"Then you aren't being bullied. Let's find some other words. Maybe you are talking to somebody who in't using nice language?"
"No, he is mean!"
"Well, he might have acted mean, but we don't know if he is actually mean."
Eyes roll. Kids go play again.

Later we end up at the park again. "Oh great, the bullies." Oliver says. I end up saying hi to the other kids and ask if they like their summer. They answered in a nice way and that was it. The boys were all off playing again. For DAYS. They would beg to get home to play with their new friends. "Get his mom's number so we can text!" Austin would say. "I don't want to go to Chicago, I want to stay here and play!" Oliver would cry.

Fast forward to yesterday when I was cruising Facebook and somebody snapped a shot of a family stopped at Starbucks all sitting together on their phones with the obvious captions of how sad this is. And it is! I will agree! But it is simply a snapshot and my god we have been there. We have been traveling or staying in a place with no Internet or sightseeing all day and collapse into a Starbucks with Chris and I on our phones. The boys and I have joined Chris at his "Starbucks Office" with Ipads in tow so I can spend an hour on the computer researching places. I can almost hear the remarks on the highway as we look like a family going camping and the boys are playing video games and I'm on my phone "Can't they even go camping without getting off their screens?" people would say.

But what got me was in the comments when somebody said how sad it was as young children have no socialization skills today, and I have to disagree pretty strong heartedly. For after traveling this long it is the kids that we are totally blown away by. We meet them everywhere, "HI!" they say and a friendship that seems to have been shared for a lifetime is experienced. They play tag, race bikes, teach each other how to roller blade, skateboard, or new tricks of diving. The other night Chris and I sat on a picnic bench as Oliver went and joined a game of football with kids that ranged from 5 to 14. One of the older boys was so patient with Oliver's 100 questions on how to play the game, or why that guy was just tagged, or if he could have the ball. Austin found a friend who also wasn't interested in football and they made a jump for their bikes. The kids have met far more friends than Chris and I have, though some of those spill over and we all just hit it off. A couple of weeks ago we were at a bike park and the kids started playing with some other kids, who then had parents that we started chatting to and the next day the boys and I found ourselves biking for 2.5 hours with them, pushing ourselves further than we would normally and having a great time because of it! They have struck up friendships that then have us traveling to different parts of the state to meet up again and continue the hours of play they get to experience. The kids we have met have been a HUGE reason why this trip has been so successful. "Mama, my favorite day of the week is Friday when all of the kids start coming to the campgrounds so we can play!" was a sentence that took Chris and I back a little as we tend to love Mondays when the camps thin out.

"Kids never just go out and play!" I hear parents say. But are we letting them? With parents calling police because they see kids unattended at parks or parents afraid that a kidnapper is lurking behind every tree, do our children even have the ability to go and "socialize" without their screens if parents don't have the time to go sit at the park? We went to a park a couple of months ago with some parents and all the kids started a soccer game. The parents said, "This is just like the old days when kids would start pickup games!" But it's not the old days. It's now, and kids still want to and can do this as long as we allow them to.

I am not sure what the above commenter's experience has been to lead them to say that kids have no socialization skills these days. Maybe she is surrounded by teenagers with free access to screens and zero access to outside? Maybe she is working in an environment where kids have angst? I don't know. But I would love for her to come be with us for a week and experience the awesomeness that is our youth. What would have happened if we had taken a snapshot of the kid who called Oli a "butt face?" We would have lost out on days of playtime and memories of learning to catch lighting bugs. We would have lost out on the lesson that a moment of rudeness does not paint a true picture of who that person is. So I am hoping that comment was just a snapshot, and she too is not quite as down on our youth as it made her sound, because I can guarantee she would be missing out on hours of playtime and happy memories.