Dear Moms, Dads, Relatives, Educators and Business Owners

There are competitive children, like my nephew, where everything is about being the biggest, best and fastest. He thrives on competing and winning. He is focused and his mind is on the end goal. He is the child you can rely on to score the goals.

Then there are children like my daughter. She intends to try her best and win but she gets caught up in the excitement of the experience and her goal changes to enjoying the ride rather than what lies at the end of the journey. My daughter is the child in the middle of the soccer field waving and smiling at all the spectators whilst the ball goes whizzing past her, followed by the competitive boys heading towards the goal posts!

We recently participated in the ECR mini Big Walk at uShaka Marine World. (Great value for money by the way, entry cost only R66 for the 4 of us to walk through the aquarium and watch a dolphin show!) Anyway...my daughter decides she wants to be the fastest walker and today she is going to win. Never mind the fact that it's a fun charity walk. So we start off near the front of the crowd at a fast walking pace. It's a warm, sunny day with a mardi gras atmosphere. We pace quickly past the clown doing his magic tricks, the jelly fish on stilts blowing a vuvuzela and we side step around the man on the unicycle. She has not lost focus of her goal despite all the possible distractions. We stop briefly to fill up the goody bags with water, lip ice and a hat and she is off again with mom, dad and brother in tow. She races down into the aquarium, excited to see the marine creatures.

45 minutes later (after inspecting every tank and window, playing on anchors, boxes and coils of old rope), we hear the dolphin show is about to start. We look around to see we are the last of the mini walkers in the aquarium. All the other participants have finished the walk and are waiting patiently for the dolphin show to start. We make our way out of the aquarium into the bright sunlight. The kids are bouncing around with excitement and firing questions at me about the shark cage they can see hanging above the shark tank. As I said, completely caught up in the experience...

Speaking of being caught up in the experience and mardi gras atmospheres. Don't you just love the cars adorned with flags and wing mirror socks and all the soccer decor and paraphernalia in the shops? I even saw a vuvuzela lamp with a soccer ball lamp shade last week! The traffic light vendors must be experiencing exceptionally good cash flows.

Schools break up in a weeks time and we are looking forward to a fun and festive Winter holiday with the Rainbow Nation in full bloom and the sounds of laughing children and vuvuzela's echoing through the neighbourhoods and drowning out the Hadedas. Anyone know where to buy South African flag adorned ear muffs?

http://www.kidzworld.co.za

 June 2010