Building of Outdoor Play Apparatus
As parents we are constantly reminded that it is our responsibility to get our offspring to be active, to get exercise and not to lie around eating fast food while playing computer games. Many parents will probably agree that persuading their children to ignore their televisions and computer games can be impossible.
Last year I invested a significant amount of hard earned cash in a few pieces of outdoor play equipment, chosen by my two youngsters. They always enjoy a visit to our local park where they can race around, swing on the swings, slide on the slides, bounce on the bouncy things and climb the climbing frames. Unfortunately our nearest park is about 3 miles away so these visits are not as frequent as they or I would like. So I bit the bullet and shelled out quite a bit of money on a wooden swing slide playset and climbing frame which I put together whilst my wife was conveniently at the health spa.
Now I would like to report that my generosity has paid off and my children are now fit and active and can’t get enough of their new equipment.But nothing could be further from the truth. Since I installed the equipment (which presented many headaches, took a lot of hammering and quite a bit of bad language) they have probably only played on it three times. Admittedly I didn’t get the equipment until the Autumn of 2009 and since then our weather has been atrocious.
At least that is the reason they give when I try to convince them that they’d enjoy a little outdoor play. It’s too cold, they often say. Or, ‘the swings are too wet to sit on’ is another excuse that I hear. I’ll be needing one of those spa treatments at this rate!
I’m hoping that, as we move into spring and the weather improves, they will naturally want to get out into the garden and get some much needed exercise on their new outdoor toys. I’m dreading another miserable, wet summer as this will result in my expanding children just expanding even more instead of working off those excess pounds with a little outdoor adventure. Nobody ever said that being a parent was easy. Although the odd massage does go down well when it all gets a bit stressful
