As part of my son’s Duke of Edinburgh challenge, he has to learn a skill, move (do a sport that increases his heart rate) and serve.
It’s the last one that’s been the most challenging.
After lots of ideas, and not a lot of follow through, he (we) settled on an hour of picking up rubbish a week.
On our first day out, he asked whether it was volunteering if you ‘had’ to do it.
The philosophical conversations have continued from there, including what Trump has been up to (endless content there!), how to resolve an argument (first question do you need to ‘win’?), and the relative benefits of different water pistols (developing his sales skills…).
It’s also given me some time to muse about the effectiveness of marketing. I’m not just talking about water pistols, but the impact of the ‘be a tidy kiwi’ campaign. Apparently it started before I was born but I definitely grew up with it, which means, to this day, I hear it whenever I walk past rubbish. That’s a lot less comfortable in London than in the much less populated (by both people and litter) part of NZ where I’m from.
I’ve noticed my son has generally been wearing his NZ t-shirt when out on our missions, so I wonder if it will be part of his cultural inheritance as well?
Tough Mother 