P.E.!

P.E. Phys ed. Gym. Whatever you called it, I hated it. I was "not athletic". Code for "clumsy". And fat, which school kids are really harsh on in and out of gym glass, let me tell you. And I could barely see since for whatever reason I didn't get glasses til 13 despite obviously needing them years earlier. Yeah, gym was not my thing.

So I look at my lovely free range, gym class free kids and the difference is amazing. Now, my dh was athletic (coordinated and, at the time, slim and not yet needing glasses) so for him gym was fun. So who knows, maybe Bridget would have liked gym in school (well, given her resistance to authority - not very likely). Owen, on the other hand, inherited my coordination. He would have been the poor kid being pelted in the head with the dodge ball (who invented that game anyway? Sadists?).

Anyway, today was fun despite me being sick (AGAIN - or, more to the point STILL! Let's not talk of that anymore). First we went to skating. Owen doesn't skate but played with friends. Bridget skated, chatted, played and skated for over an hour. Some of those kids are intimidating. Last week for Bridget's birthday she wanted to go skating as a family and - not joking here - at one point I almost fell while standing still. The windmilling arms and everything. So watching her little friends skate on one leg and do cross overs and all that stuff - wow. Bridget isn't there yet but she's skating really well and is happy with her progress :-D

We got home and she commenced to scootering around the house. She got a razor scooter for her birthday after trying a friend's one at a playdate a while back. We have mostly hard wood floors and a circular floor plan so she was zipping around the house at a good pace.

Eventually she got tired of that and moved to the DVD of Dance Dance Revolution she also got for her birthday.

In between all that she played SIMS but most of the time it was back and forth between scootering and dancing for quite awhile.

After dinner we went to the school yard with both kid's scooters. While there, Owen tried out the razor scooter and whadyaknow - he did good! Ok, so he couldn't steer, but he was able to ride it without falling :-D Now he wants one for Christmas.

We're biting the bullet (gulp) and after Robert gets his next paycheck we're signing up for the Y. Both kids are really excited about the idea of being able to swim all year round. Well, technically only Bridget can swim, but Owen is getting there with his floaties.

Meanwhile Bridget has been asking me if I can find another kid's race for her to run in. The one I thought was going on this October seemed to have been cancelled so it looks like we'll just plan ahead for the one she did last year (March). That gives her plenty of time to practice.

The point of my rambling? If I picked any one of these activities and called it "P.E." and told the kids they *had* to do it - no choice - it would kill the joy of it. Maybe not for all kids but for mine it would. Definitely Bridget, little Miss "No one tells ME what to do".

When I was a kid these activities were not fun because I wasn't good at them, true, but they also weren't fun because even though I wasn't as strong a kid as Bridget is, I also had my authority resistant streak. Being told I *have* to do something kills it for me. Even now, at 38, I do not want someone else telling me what to do. So all those things that might have been fun weren't simply because they were required.

Biking was always fun because it was never a school sport. It was something we did at home for fun, or with my dad. I did a 25 mile bike tour of Central Park when I was a kid and it wasn't "exercise" or "P.E.". It was FUN. Swimming in the lake in Maine was FUN. Anything I did because I chose it was FUN.

My kids do NOT know how good they have it and probably never will. Lucky ducks ;-)