Sometimes kids should have fun the old way

In the end, the two trips to the pool shop, the endless backwashing and the hundreds of rands in chemicals were worth it – just to see the joy of the two children who splashed around for hours in our swimming pool.

It reminded me of simpler times – before the internet, before social media and before the pervasiveness of electronic gadgets – when we as kids made our own entertainment.

We jumped about in rivers, our mothers’ warnings about catching bilharzia forgotten as soon as our feet hit the pedals of our bikes to go exploring. We rolled around atop 44-gallon drums, pretending we were tanks in the Battle of the Bulge, our balance becoming so good we rarely fell off.

TV wasn’t great and our parents rationed it, so we read books and listened to the cricket on the radio, as we learned how to “play” it with paper, pencil and dice.

I worry – now that we have a granddaughter – what the future holds for children… and how we should be trying to give them as much of an “analogue” experience as possible.

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When my son was barely able to sit, I began the tradition of the “Third World Video” – where I would do a “drawing story” on plasticised white paper as we sat next to each other on plastic baby chairs (I was a lot lighter then, to be fair).

He learned about the Titanic, long before the film, because I drew it for him. Ditto with the Hindenburg airship tragedy.

Dad was quite good at drawing cars, boats and planes but rubbish at everything else… but he didn’t know. Yet his knowledge of events like the Titanic at a young age surprised many.

Another thing you might try is doing something different for birthdays. Trust me on this – no matter how sophisticated the child, they love riding in wheelbarrows. Those featured prominently in a Gummi Bears party (where I made a replica eagle boat) and in a Cinderella celebration for my daughter, where she and her friends were chauffeured around by an exhausted Dad in a barrow rigged to look like a carriage.

As my son got older, we couldn’t afford to keep up with his mates’ parents – paying a fortune for “experiences” like Laser Quest – so I constructed a military-type “jungle lane” in our garden, with moving targets the boys shot at with dart guns.

No-one had seen anything like it and a few fathers were not happy with me for setting the bar so high…

Bottom line: hands on (and feet on) the old-fashioned way is fun you can’t get from an LED screen.

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