MY STOMACH plummetted when I got a call from the Riversdale Surf and Lifesaving Club yesterday, because the last thing I want to report on is a Wairarapa contribution to the drowning statistics this summer, especially since it feels like it's happening nearly every day so far.
Thankfully, the call was almost entirely the opposite: a communications person relating the good work of the club in their junior surf life saving programme, the Nippers. Apparently there's a lot signed up for the programmes already, and there's room for more.
It's never too late to sign your kids up to something a bit more extreme than just a holiday programme that involves games, painting and a movie day -- although these are all perfectly active things, and does have the benefit of giving parents a bit of free time to themselves. But our paper today also features the training ship Spirit of New Zealand, which takes teenagers on a 10-day voyage of hard work, no cell phones and hopefully some discovery and sense of achievement and self-worth.
Parents often talk about adversity and how hard work builds character, and it is true. Any one of us in our middle age can relate a memorable event where one emerged the better person because of it. But it's not the easiest concept to convey to digital natives like your children, and one could be reluctant to enrol your child into something that requires a bit of bravery and strength of character.
I look at the Nippers programme, and the Spirit of New Zealand trip, as related by college student Lola Coulthard-Miller on page 5, and I wish I had done something like that. I'm lucky in that Scouts, in my day, did similar things in subjecting you to adventures and some hard yacker away from your parents. If I had children now, I would give them the experience. It is too easy, because the digital environment is so overwhelming, to miss out on something Facebook can never deliver: camaraderie through a shared adversity. Even camping has elements of it, and it is gratifying to see plenty of camping going on towards Mt Holdsworth. Give your kids a chance to wake up in a sleeping bag in a tent -- or in the bunk of a moving ship. They'll always remember it, and probably pass it on.