Many people have said to me you never stay home do you?  I will answer them not really, I am the anti-stay at home, stay at home mom.  I love bringing my kids many different places and letting them experience life.

-Don’t just read about doing things or watch them on tv, actually do things!!!

-Teach your children about life by giving them life experiences.

-Teach your children when to feel safe and when to feel leery of others by being around many different people.

-Teach your children how to solve problems by giving them real life opportunities to practice solving them.

-You can’t create life experiences if you never leave the house.

It is a whole lot easier to not leave the house, to not have to plan ahead, pack lunches, pack snacks, pack strollers, bundle up little kids, worry about melt downs, but that does not mean you should take the easy road and stay home.

Your kids will be healthier if you never bring them out of the house and expose them to germs from other sick kids with their sticky, dirty, germy hands touching everything that your kids will touch.  How will your childs immune system deal with the onslaught of germs once they reach school age if they have not already had every one of the normal childhood illnesses?

Your kids wont have to experience mean children if you never bring them places where mean children play.   How are they going to learn how to defend themselves and when it is important to stand up for themselves and others?   There will always be mean kids, mean teenagers and mean adults, give them the life experiences and talk to them about how to deal with mean people and stand up for themselves without being violent.

Your kids won’t know how fortunate they are if they dont see poor people. If you never bring them downtown and let them see the homeless people walking out of the shelter or staying warm in the skyways.  Let them appreciate their good fortune and see first hand how some people live, teach them kindness and empathy.

Your kids need to see that there are dangerous people in the world that they need to watch out for.  Teach them to appreciate that the police and fire departments are here, show them what a burnt down house looks like,  point out to them that bad people get caught and get arrested.

Your kids will not learn to stand up for themselves if they don’t see you standing up for yourself!  If we never leave the house we would not experience that not everyone in the world are honest or rule followers.  My children have witnessed me standing up for what I believe is right by me confronting others.

Let your kids experience unfairness when they have been standing in line to go across the lily pads at the pool and a rude kid cuts in front of them. Use that as  a learning experience to teach them to stand up for themselves in the future and to say I was here first.

Show your children which people you want them to avoid because they are scary or give you a bad feeling, let them learn to trust their instincts and know that not all people are good. Give your kids opportunities to be around strangers so you can teach them which strangers are not okay to talk to.

Let your kids learn about life by experiencing it first hand, bring your kids in as many places as you can, teach them how to live life around all different kinds of people not just people who you want to associate with. Give them the skills to live through life experiences, and the real world opportunities to practice those skills.

Despite being more work, more time, more germs, more mean kids, more frightening, I bring my kids out to experience the world!