What Makes a Childhood?

It's been storming on and off in Joburg this past week, which has made getting out the house with a baby a tad impossible. Being home confined hasn't been all bad, and in truth it got me thinking: what makes a childhood? Now the obvious answer here is a child. Yes, I suppose a child is imperative to having a childhood, but I mean what makes a childhood good? How do you create those awesome childhood memories? The memories that forge friendships and have you talking about them way into adulthood.

I have been so focussed on going out to create great playdates, to let me son have wonderful experiences and explore new places, that somewhere along the line I have forgotten that fun happens at home too. And so, on these rainy days I've been thinking that maybe we place too much emphasis on going out and not enough emphasis on making the ordinary fun. These memories that we're creating need to start at home - from running in garden to baking in the kitchen, to even building a fort. Because, if I teach my son that we need to go out to have a good time, then perhaps he will grow up believing that staying at home is automatically boring.

Does that mean we won't go out? Of course not. It just means that I'll be putting less emphasis on it. It means that not every weekend needs to have an outing. It means that there's no reason to not have a picnic in the garden. It means that on rainy days, it's perfectly fine to cuddle on the couch and read. It means that we can have a dancing party in the kitchen. It means that even if I'm awful at baking, we can make a morning of it and mess the kitchen up.

Maybe we're too hard on ourselves in trying to shape and mould the perfect childhood for our kids, and maybe we can teach them the wonder in the ordinary.

When I look back at my childhood, the things that stand out for me are the simple things - like playing swingball in my backyard (anyone else remember this?), running with the dogs in the garden, waking up at 5am in the morning and jumping on parents bed to get them to wake up, sitting on the kitchen counter waiting to lick the bowel while my mom baked a cake, and yes - going to the park with my parents. And all of these things are pretty great memories, and I'm fairly certain my parents weren't half as worried about creating wonderful memories than we are - I guess it just came naturally.

And so, I'm learning that we don't have to go out to have fun. That if I miss a coffee date/play date it's okay. That if we still haven't taken a trip to the zoo, we'll survive - we'll make it happen at some point. And that there's nothing wrong with making the ordinary and everyday fun. It's been an eye opener for me, I'm not going to lie. I always envisioned myself as the parent that would do outings every weekend, and I have had to come to terms with the fact that weekends at home are perfectly fine and often needed.