Our Kids All Play for Canada at Pacific Gardens

I'm sure you've seen the recent ads on TV sponsored by Canadian Tire about how important it is for kids to play.

They feature shots of kids in darkened rooms, eyes glued to their mobile phones or tablets, lying inert on a couch or in bed.

Apparently that's the life of a great number of children in Canada - but certainly not here at Pacific Gardens.

Yes, the kids do watch television - but usually in the company of others, both adults and children.

They play games, but they're the old-fashioned kind - scrabble, monopoly, cards - plus the new ones like Catan and Magic the Gathering.

Or else they're jumping up and down on the communal pogo-stick on our outdoor patio, swinging on the swings, and teetering on the teeter-totter.

When they're not doing that they're helping in the garden or taking out the compost or playing hide-and-seek both inside and outside the building.

It's an old-fashioned kind of childhood, with a constantly changing supply of playmates as children arrive, leave, go to school and come back from school.

It does mean that some of the places in our building are not the tidiest or the quietest or the cleanest.

Toys litter the atrium, the kids' room goes through cycles of neatness and chaos, and the patio outside the dining-room is littered with tiny bicycles and tricycles.

But I'd rather hear the shouts of children playing and trip over lego in the hallways than see kids lying on the couch texting instead of talking.

Kathryn