A Bug's Life

My children are quite an anomaly. Most parents I have talked to say their children LOVE to play outside. They can't get enough of outside. No matter how hot or cold it is they just want to be outside. Mine, on the other hand, I have to BEG to go outside.I have to plead on my hands and knees for them to go outside. I have to bribe them to go outside. And then when all that doesn't work I have to shove them outside and lock the door behind them.

It wasn't always this way. Last summer they were normal. Last summer they wanted to eat every meal outside. Last summer was heaven for me. And I had every reason to believe that I was in for more of the same this summer.

And it is something very tiny that has made all the difference. (and I litterally mean something tiny)

You see, I don't know how it happened, but much to my dismay my oldest two children are TERRIFIED of bugs. I mean down right petrified!!! Like if I made them choose between eating broccoli (which they both claim they don't like) or being in the sandbox with one tiny, harmless ant they would gag down the broccoli. (hey, maybe that's an idea! perhaps that's how to get them to eat their vegetables....but I digress) If before going to bed I told them, in my scariest voice, that there were monsters in their closet that were going to come after them as soon as the light was off they'd laugh at me and have pleasant dreams about Mike and Sully. But if I told them in a casual sort of way that there was an ant in the kitchen they would have nightmares all night long and would cry and plead and beg until I let them sleep in bed with me.

Try as I might I can't convince them that these bugs are harmless. And sending the kids outside to play is no longer heave for me because I spend the whole time removing bugs from the sandbox, the slide, the cozy coupe, and the playhouse. I sent them outside this morning and in the first 10 minutes that was a spider in the sandbox and potato bug on the sidewalk and an ant in the playhouse. And each time they came crying to screaming to the door begging "mom, mom! get the bug away!!! can we come in please? there are bugs!"

And the worst part is that they want me to kill them all. Simply removing the offending creature to the grass or the flower bed is not good enough. If they had their way I would rid the entire great outdoors of every bug. I keep trying to explain that bugs live outside, that outside is their home, so it's not really very sporting of me to kill them when they are outside. I protest their pleas by trying to rationalize with them that if I were to try to annihilate every single outside bug that was merely going out its own business, hurting nobody, it would result in another holocaust, making me the next Hitler. But they haven't studied world history yet so they don't quite grasp the tragedy of it all.

Needless to say my children won't be winning Fear Factor anytime in the near or distant future.