I like walking with him, it is something we do, it is something that at this point at nine months he sees his umbrella stroller and knows what it is for and gets excited...which makes me happy, and I believe, and I could be wrong here, that if I start him outside young, get him walking when he is little, he will enjoy outside.
I loathe the idea of him wanting to stay in his room all day and play video games... I just don't want that battle because it will not happen. I do not dislike video games as a whole and I do not think that kids should not play them at all, but if there is one thing I have learned by growing up right on the cusp of the Video Game culture and having friends just younger than me enough to see how their lives developed in comparison to mine, where games were more a part of a kid's daily life... I do not want my kid to have that struggle and I want him to love doing things more than sitting in front of a screen. So we walk every single day... we go outside, we take him places like the Indian Celebration even though he is too little to remember...
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| Here he is with his dad at a demonstration |
There is also the social interaction with all types of people we get when we walk that I find ultimately important. We now have a pretty diverse host of characters we see almost every day from the sweet crossing guard to the old man on his bike who calls us Sunshine! Whenever Adam walks with us (I can convince him to do it every now and again when we end up walking in the afternoons), I tell him little stories about the house full of cats (they have like 8 cats outside), the nice old couple who says Aiden always beats me home...or just anyone we come in contact with...
We've never had a bad experience... well there was that one time someone was speeding through the neighborhood, but another neighbor saw it as well and got very angry... I like my neighbors.
If I could just transplant this neighborhood into a bigger city, I would be pretty much content LOL.
