Children and Adventure

Hmmm, hard to start off this blog, but I will do so with something I was thinking about while on an airplane last week while listening to the goings on around me.

I propose that children (of any sort) need four things in order to have a joyful and productive life--not from any experience raising children know I this, as anyone who has most likely feels their methods are best anyways--but from being one once and growing up and from watching my fellow children among family friends grow up and witnessing others come up after and guessing about the childhoods of adults I know--the four things being physical needs met, learning, love, and adventure.  Many kids are raised without this fourth need met these days, where it was in abundance in days past.  I believe that a child raised without a healthy dose of adventure will grow up to be a small-minded adult--lacking in imagination and courage, more likely to be self-pitying, entitlement-demanding, and shallow.  Harsh maybe, but I strongly feel that small steps ever into the wild and unknown (guided by their loving guardians or, if mostly safe, exploring and discovering on their own) will teach a child to be creative, brave, self-reliant and to seek a life more meaningful.  May the shallow children makers find adventure themselves and so gain the depth, fortitude, and desire to pass these lessons on to their offspring.

Me with my Grandpa, leaving for a camping trip-- so grateful to have known a life full of adventure and to have gleaned the lessons it has had to teach.