Teach Your Kids to Roughhouse in Slow Motion
Children, they will fight. If you have a child – and especially if you have more than one child – you’ve probably noticed their propensity for extremely physical play. Maybe you’ve even played with them yourself – it can be fun ! But now that we are 72 years old in this pandemic and are looking at a long, dark, cold winter (sorry, it is coming), you can get a little bit of all these jumping off the walls and into every other excitement. The solution to this problem, of course, comes from Reddit.
Reddit user u / ITWrksSalem explains:
My children (boys 6, 3) are wild animals. They keep asking me if we can do some hooliganism (they got it from gma). I was exhausted yesterday and just blurted out, “Can we please just try a little peace of mind at least once?”
Both of them found it incredibly funny, and they agreed to try it.
Calm is like a struggle, only slower, softer and quieter. In practice, it basically boils down to my boys lying on the ground, hugging each other and whispering jokes to each other.
I liked the idea, but u / sleepyheadp quickly stepped in, offering a slightly different formulation of the same concept that I think kids will love even more: wrestling in slow motion:
I recommend slow motion mode. Basically all the same movements in roughness, but they have to do it in slow motion, like in the cool parts of the film.
I tested this theory with my 10-year-old son, who, unsurprisingly, enjoys wrestling a little at times, especially with his friends. The problem lately has been that they enjoy fighting each other during the weekly mini-lessons we organized for him and his three buddies to complement their virtual classroom work. They want to fight; Miss Beth wants them to calm down and start practicing Spanish.
My son claims he is never the instigator of the fight, but as the biggest and strongest member of the group, he is more likely to do some real damage. And, listen, if you go to him, he’ll come back; it’s just the reality we live in.
“I think I have a solution to your wrestling problem,” I told him this morning.
“I’m listening,” he replied.
I described it to him and then we tried it and it’s fun and interesting. So now he and his friends can “fight” between Spanish lessons without annoying poor Miss Beth at all, and that is es bueno.