Go Tell Mom s1e4 - Family Hobbies

Dianna Kelly makes the connection between family hobbies and family unity at the end of the day.

Show Notes Links:
On the importance of hobbies, from childdevelopmentinfo.com:  https://childdevelopmentinfo.com/child-activities/hobbies-are-healthy/

On family hobby suggestions from the Chicago Tribune:  https://www.chicagotribune.com/featured/sns-best-family-hobbies-ideas/

On gardening benefits, from healthline.com: 

https://www.healthline.com/health/healthful-benefits-of-gardening 

Transcript

It seems like the family splits in several different directions when the kids return to school. New friendships develop. Sometimes between parents, as well as between kids.  I remember my daughter playing baseball – she didn’t want to play softball – and sitting with a couple of moms at practice, watching our kids go through the drills. We’d share snacks and stories and concern over the inevitable injuries…and advice over how to treat them. It was a nice bonding time.

Kids often bond over sports. They also bond in clubs.  I remember when I was editor of my high school yearbook, I’d bring my section-editors over to my house to hash over layouts and text and art and photos. My mom was usually in the kitchen, fixing us snacks and coffee. (My addiction to coffee was directly connected to afternoons like these, when I was home from school and Mom was home from work, and someone was joining us for a coffee klatch.) There was always laughing involved, along with smart-assed remarks from all sides. 

Kids learn about themselves when they’re involved with others in some fun and interesting activity. Childdevelopmentinfo.com points out that hobbies are a handy way to get children into a club or group down the road. Hobbies give a child a chance to express themselves, and build self-esteem. But kids learn how to be hobbyists through their parents. And family hobbies can help draw a family together at the end of the day.  You just have to pick the right one. Sometimes that involves trial and error.

My dad had been an Eagle Scout, and got my brother involved in scouting. Or maybe I should say, he cheered on my mom when she was a den mother. Mom was great when it came to things like tying knots and studying stars…but one of the hallmarks of scouting is camping trips. And it was there she put her foot down.

Oh, Dad tried to get her to go camping, saying it would be good for the family.  And Mom was usually a good sport, and would try anything. Once. They rented a camper and we all piled in one weekend. 

I don’t remember where we went, except there were woods involved, lots of bugs, washing facilities in a restroom hut with walls that didn’t go all the way to the floor – so they could hose off the concrete – and sleeping bags into which my brother threatened to stuff a frog. Or a spider.  I don’t remember which.  I just remember no one slept, including Mom and Dad, and Mom made reference to “a mattress soft as a rock.”  

Dinner was fish we caught in the lake and cooked over an open fire, which sounds almost romantic, right?  Except for baiting the hooks with worms (which I was actually proud of being able to do without squirming too much,) and cutting the heads off the fish (nope, not me), gutting them, and de-scaling them. I don’t even remember how they tasted, I just know that I was personally responsible for their deaths. 

So, Mom and my little sister and I took a hard pass the next time a camping trip was suggested.  Again, when you ponder activities for the whole family, the word “Yuck” should not be part of the conversation. Unless all parties involved like that word.

On the other hand, Halloween was always a Kelly family specialty.  Dad always had something cooked up to surprise trick-or-treaters.  One year he dressed up in a devil costume and flicked on a flashlight under his face and gave a devil laugh that would give Vincent Price a run for his money. Seriously, he had three-year-olds quaking in their storm trooper boots. Good thing they didn’t know he was affable Mr. Kelly who cranked up homemade ice cream every summer, or they’d be sidestepping away from him for years. 

Another time, Dad rigged up a zip line from the attic window and the bottom of the front porch, and had a bat basket deliver treats.  My sibs and I would go trick-or-treating with my grandfather about a half-hour after the fun started, while Mom did candy-stocking patrol. Every year, we’d huddle at the dinner table a week before Halloween and try to figure out what fun thing we could do to terrify the neighbor kids. By the time I hit my teens, I was helping out with the fear factor stuff, and actually having more fun than trick-or-treating.  

I tried passing that on to my kids, making it both a hobby and family tradition. They definitely were into decking the house with cobwebs and playing scary music, but I wound up doing the door-answering deal, while their dad took them house-to-house. Didn’t stop me from wearing a spooky costume, though!

Some hobbies suggested in the Chicago Tribune for family bonding include learning a foreign language – which no one in my brood wanted to do; photography – everyone in my family liked that hobby when I was growing up…but there was only so much you could do with a Brownie camera; and gardening.

I love to garden, and my mom and I tried to get a little garden growing in our backyard. Dad dug it up for us, and dug a patch in the side yard for a tomato garden for him and my brother to tend. The side yard got just the right amount of rays, and they got a decent crop. Plus, no one in the neighborhood had to see the not-terribly attractive wooden poles, because the hedge was too high on that side, which made Mom happy.

Unfortunately, the back yard did not get enough sun to make a large crop of flowers happy, so the gardening experiment didn’t work for the whole family. But it did create an interest in flowers for my sister and me. And when we both had our own yards, we planted flowers we would have wanted to thrive when we were kids. Gardening is a great way to get kids interested in the way things grow.

My neighbor down the street moved in about a year ago.  I see her once in a while in her yard when I’m walking my dogs, and we say hi.  But a couple of weeks ago, I noticed she had a HUGE vine sprawling under her tree.  So, the next time I was promenading with the pups, we stopped and chatted.  She was so excited.  She’s a teacher at one of the local elementary schools, and she and her family had dumped some pumpkin seeds leftover from Halloween last year under the tree…and they started growing!  And now she has pumpkins!  She plans to take the seeds left over from these pumpkins and have her kids grow them at home for class, starting them on their family gardening adventure.

Working in a garden can help you maintain a healthy weight, get a good night’s sleep, fight stress and improve your mood and self-esteem. Healthline.com says it can also increase your intake of Vitamin D – the sunshine vitamin. Watching something grow together makes it a family project.

Volunteering is also a great way to make kids aware of the community while being part of a family project.  My radio career introduced me to the St. Jude Radiothon, where we would urge listeners to call in to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. My partner and I went to visit the hospital and told the kids about it when we got back.  For several years, they’d grab some of their friends and man the phone bank for a couple of hours while their parents were on the air. I made a trek out to the hospital campus one time with my daughter after her dad and I had split up, and it was kind of a healing experience for both of us, knowing we’d be helping other families with the annual radiothon.

Family hobbies don’t have to be that intense or time consuming.  I have friends who love to put together jigsaw puzzles as a family. Kind of a big-picture experience for everyone involved. I have another friend who loved collecting rocks, and her husband and son got into it, too.

Then there’s hiking, which I consider a concession to camping, for those who want to have a family outdoor experience.  It’s good exercise, and you can go at your own pace. I’ve seen deer on our walks, along with bunnies and other gentler forms of wildlife. Just make sure if you’re heading out on a trail, you know where it leads, and what wildlife you could bump into out there.  If bears have been spotted in the woods – and some have been, where I live – tread carefully.

One thing we never did get around to doing in my family was dog training.  I’ve been mommy to six furbabies, four of whom I lost to health conditions – usually old age. But beyond housebreaking and walking on a leash, I really didn’t teach them tricks.  My kids just weren’t interested. But obedience training and tricks can engage you and your family’s problem-solving skills and creativity and boost your confidence as pet owners. And that makes both the kids and the pets happy.

On the whole, bringing your family together serves a sneaky purpose: you’re using a project to mask the fact that you’re all TOGETHER, as one unit, doing some bonding that will last decades past the school year.