My paternal grandfather died when I was quite young, but paternal grandmother lived into her late 90’s in an old farmhouse on a 200 acre farm. One of my favorite pastimes in the winter involved picking up sheets of ice from the hog wallows and breaking them with frozen dirt clods.
When I was older, I got to explore the hills and hollows on the west side of the farm, accompanied with the dogs to protect me from the snakes and the occasional squirrel or groundhog.

My maternal grandparents were divorced before I was born. When I was a teen, my maternal grandfather remarried to a divorced woman who was close to my mother’s age and got 4 rowdy step children in the deal. The youngest stepchild was my age, and I would visit with them in the small town where they lived.
There, along with my “step-uncle” and his friends we would spend our time in strenuous physical (and somewhat dangerous) activities such as free-climbing road-cuts and sliding*. My grandfather simply set rules and we were responsible to follow the rules and pay the consequences if we broke them.
And we did. One cold winter night, we had a hot water bomb battle and returned late after our curfew, army surplus jackets stiffened with ice, to find that we were locked out of the house. We spent the rest of the night in the root cellar, where the temperature averaged about 50 degrees, and was still warmer than 28 degrees. And we learned to be back on time.

My paternal grandmother remarried to an expert welder who was one of the welders that constructed the gateway arch. For many years afterward, he taught welding classes at a technical vocational school in East St Louis, while they lived in Belleville Il. I remember as a child, visiting for the summer, watching the Cardinals play at Busch Stadium (II), a trip to Grant’s Farm, and of course a visit to the Arch.

*note:What is “sliding”

Sliding is sort of the hillbilly version of skiing, requiring neither skis on snow. The slider wears tough footwear and slides down a steep hill on gravel, wet leaves, mud or any other available slippery surface. Speed and direction is controlled by grabbing small tree trunks along the way.

When I was in my thirties, I read Chuck Yeager’s autobiography, and was quite surprised to learn that he had done his share of sliding as a teen in West Virginia, and that he once evaded capture during WWII by sliding off a mountain.

We let our kids pick their own activities, like I did when I was little. It makes no sense to me to push my kids into something they don’t want and would just tick me off if it were me being pushed.

However, there are exceptions. Some days we kick the kids out of the house because the weather is too nice to be inside.

My wife tells the kids to get outside and “run the stink off” which is what her great grandmother told her to do when she was little!

On some of these days, we may go to a park, go bike riding or some other outdoor activity.

Yesterday, Ben had two friends over and (outside!) they battled each other for neighborhood domination. Bella and I went to a no-kill shelter we like (Open Door, in House Springs, Mo.) and made sure we had petted all the kitties so they got some love! Our two kitty friends, Spock and Kiss-Kiss, are adopted from Open Door. Some of the kitties are favorites of ours and we look forward to seeing them every six weeks or so when we go out to Open Door. When Bella’s a little older, I’ll go there with her to volunteer, if she still want to volunteer. The animals really like Bella and Ben and it’s really cool to see my kids covered with kitties wanting pets and chins scratched!

I think if we give kids the space to find their own way, they are more confident, caring and compassionate because these were essential to have their life work.

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