I have spent a large portion of the last 10 years assembling and re-assembling elaborate wooden train track sets for my children. When Jordan was a baby, we had a neighbor who was extremely outspoken when it came to wooden train sets. Her boys would build "communities" that took up their entire basement and spend hours upon hours in pretend play. She gave me a good talking-to when we purchased our first set about not stifling creativity with train tables and other such nonsense. I did listen........for a while. Then I caved and got the train table which solved all my storage issues. {it was wonderful} Recently we moved everything back upstairs so that Eli could have access to more "masculine" toys. Unfortunately, since the trains have been up here, they have been a big jumbled mess atop the table since he is in the unload/destroy phase.
Enter the fabulous invention of my glue gun. I CANNOT believe I didn't do this years ago. The tracks are now all securely fastened to each other and to the table. Forget creativity! I am pretty sure that my time and sanity are far more valuable than my son's engineering future. I am most likely the last mom on the planet to do this but I highly recommend it! Now we have an appealing set-up that will actually get played with once in a while.
So, the moral of this story is this: learn to recognize bad or impractical parenting advice. Do what works for you, period. (besides, my old neighbor probably locked her kids in the basement, OR maybe at 14-15 years old they are still playing with wooden trains AND obsessed with the Weather Channel)
2 comments:
I am so doing that for Brauer. Why was I not this smart/secure with my first?
I'm with you all the way Sharese. My train set is glued together and to the train table. I love it.
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