Bringing Indoor Toys Outside

Now that Spring is here, the birds are chirping, and the weather is warmer. This means our kids will be spending more time outside. Outdoor play can be filled with many great things — feeling the sun, digging dirt, shooting hoops, and the ice cream truck to name a few. But for parents it could bring headaches. There will be splinters, scrapes, ticks, bee stings, and grass damaging Slip N Slides. Even though you may be distracted by the pure bliss your kids are in, you can"t overlook an important decision: Whether to allow indoor toys to go outside. Do not make a rash decision when confronted with this request!

Once a toy leaves the clean, safe confines, of your house, it becomes tainted, forbidden to ever return inside the walls. Some of these toys should be outside. Toys like balls, frisbees, Tonka trucks, and water guns are meant for outside and are more fun there. You might have given your kid a new football for Christmas and throwing that thing indoors really isn"t practical. But take that pigskin outside and you have pure joy (and no broken vases).

Sports equipment is an easy choice. But what about stuff like your kid"s favorite stuffed animal or blanket? In my opinion, those are things that should never ever leave the safe confines of the house. Consider this scenario:

Your daughter asks you if she can bring her favorite Winnie the Pooh bear outside to play with. Your daughter sleeps with this bear. She sits him down next to her when she eats. She won"t leave the house without kissing it goodbye. When asked which single toy she wants to bring with her on a trip it isn"t even a debate…it"s Winnie.

Because of all these reasons, you say, "yes", because you are a fool and your kid has you wrapped around her little pinky. You figure, she loves that thing. She will never get it dirty. You think how much you loved and protected your 83 Topps Cal Ripkin rookie card and you figure that your kid is just as protective.

She runs outside to play with it and she puts him on her lap when she"s on the swing. She drops him in the dirt and she picks him up right away. Winnie"s nose looks like he"s a french toast stick dusted with brown sugar. She carries him up to use the slide. As she climbs, Winnie gets smooshed into every dirty rung of the ladder. Now his dirt stripes all over his yellow body makes him Winnie the Tiger.

When it is time to come in for dinner, your daughter"s once prized bear now looks like  a beat up, ratty mess. When she asks you to clean it, you try but it rubs half the fur off his body. He"s damaged goods and while you thought you were doing something good for her, you really made it worse.

So what about toys that are borderline? I say choose wisely. Your kid will want to play with toys outside because it is fun to play with toys outside. When I was a kid I always had envy for my friends who got to bring their G.I. Joe Skystrikers outside. Every time I went to their house we would dive bomb them into the sandbox, ejecting Ace and his parachute before the crash. Of course I thought was cool. That was fun by 1984 standards and I wasn"t allowed to do it. But I never witnessed what happened after it was time to go home. I never saw my friend"s parents telling them they couldn"t bring it back inside. While my Skystriker (not granted permission to fly into outdoor air space) still was able to flap it"s wings and open it"s cockpit after many plays, my friends had ones with sand and dirt stuck in the flaps. Their planes saw heavier battle time and had shorter life spans. Mine did flybys at the air show and is still in pristine condition (albeit still in its original box in my parent"s basement).

So which way is better? The answer is either: as long as your kids understand once it goes outside it might have to stay outside. You need to deploy the McDLT method: The cold side stays cold, the hot stays hot. The outdoor toys stay outdoors, the indoor  toys stay indoors.

What do you Noodads do?