I’ve always thought that the awesomeness of a playground was measured by the height of the highest slide and the number of apparatus and maybe even the brightness of the colors of paint. Turns out I was way off the mark. On the first day that Josh, Joey and I spent together I took them to a playground in San Antonio. Joey immediately started telling me that the playground sucked. I looked around and it really did. The slides were small and the equipment was old.
So, once we were in Austin, I started taking them to cool playgrounds, well at least I thought they were cool. The boys were fairly unimpressed. I started thinking maybe they thought when I said we were going to a playground they were expecting an amusement park. Then, finally we went to what I would have described as a cruddy little playground and they thought it was AWESOME. What? Boy was I confused.
On the way home I started asking questions. Ends up the awesomeness has much less to do with the slides, size of the playground or colors and everything to do with how many other kids are there and whether or not they’ll play with you. That rule has proven true at every playground we’ve been to since. Now that I see that it’s much harder for me to predict what they’ll think of a playground before we actually get there and much easier once I see the crowd.
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Interesting! I guess it is similar to all the toys I thought we "needed" that keep Chloe occupied for all of 2 minutes. Then when I give her a whisk while I am in the kitchen she will play for 20 minutes just because it looks like something she shouldn't have and she's in the same room with me. Anyway, maybe you could start a playground google group for people you know with kiddos and they could shoot a message to the group if they are headed to a park...then you have guaranteed park success?!
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