My eight year old has calloused hands – I love that! And eight year old SHOULD have callouses on their hands. Kids should be swinging off the monkey bars, climbing trees, jumping, grabbing, leaping and flipping. I show my age I saying this – but when I was a kid we were out scavenging in the local dump for bits and pieces to make a billy-cart; we would be out catching lizards, crawling through caves, and climbing trees. Today it’s very different. The dumps are council-run – god forbid a child be found playing in the muck there; lizards and native species are protected and no-one is allowed to go catching them (probably a good thing??) – kinds are more likely to be found finding their way through a nintendo or playstation maze than an actual cave – and as far as trees go; we now all live in the suburbs.I’m not saying it was a better world thirty years ago; there are many advantages of living now (travel opportunities, information availability, better medicine, etc) but there are some great things that have ‘gone out with the bath-water’.
The rough and tumble playing style of yesterday, built healthy kids. I love rough play with my boy Felix – as a result – at eight years old, he has no trouble standing on a ball and balancing there for five minutes – no trouble running six laps of the school oval – no trouble doing chin-ups or push-ups – no trouble being the natural athlete he was naturally engineered to be.
Callouses on the hands – love it!
JBW
