The pools in town are very different from the pools of my childhood: elaborate water slides, looping "lazy rivers" where inflated tubes are propelled by a slow current, complicated fountains and slowly filling overhead buckets that tip over at regular intervals. It's a little crazy. And yet we go to these pools, so much more elaborate than the concrete rectangles with diving boards that I grew up with, and my kids tell me they're bored. We went to a water park a couple of weeks ago and they told me, "There's nothing to do here." I boggled. I thought, "Kids these days..."
Tonight we had dinner with friends who live about 45 minutes away. They have a little neighborhood pool: small, rectangular, no frills. The kids spent more than an hour swimming happily, with nary a word of complaint.
So maybe the more diversions you attempt to provide, the less effort kids put into diverting themselves. Elaborate entertainment efforts by adults seem to engender ennui on the part of the kids. Agree or disagree?
Perhaps I will throw out all of the toys and give them some nice sticks and dirt to play with in the yard instead.
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