Several weeks ago we had a massive amount of rain in a short time.

When the rain was beginning to come down, the kids wanted to play outside. With the quote “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing” in mind, I offered two of the children matching raincoats and rain pants, and gave the third a good raincoat. There wasn’t any lightning and knowing they had some rain protection, I was glad to let them enjoy what quickly turned into a downpour.

They all happily ran outside and enjoyed playing for a couple of hours, splashing and jumping and running and having a great time. They came in, changed into dry clothes (yes, they still got wet even wearing rain gear), and we had lunch.

The day went on and it poured, and poured, and poured. Our yard is next to agricultural fields that are on an incline, and because it’s chemically poisoned like all fields that grow conventional crops, the dirt is absent any soil health. One result is that it has very little ability to absorb water and with rainfall like this, there was a massive amount of water pouring off the fields.

Through adult eyes, the runoff that entered our yard looked like significant flooding. In the eyes of our children, it was a watery playground! They had SO much fun, lying on their stomachs and trying to swim, zooming through the water on riding toys and scooters, and getting soaked to the skin.

Since this experience, when it starts to rain their first response to rain is to run outside!

My daughter and her family were with us for Shabbos. Once again, there was lots of rain and our walkway flooded, though nothing as much as a few weeks ago. It was still enough for the kids to have a great time running around in the water, balancing on the boards we laid down so people can walk in without getting their shoes soaked, and making up new games to play together. They dubbed the flooded garden bed next to the entrance to our yard ‘the stream’, and went wading in it, bathing their dolls, filling buckets of water and throwing them on each other and finding other activities to do.

It’s invigorating and empowering for children to have opportunities to explore and create new experiences. My daughter commented that I have a lot of patience to allow the kids to play for as long and messily as they did. They’re doing something good for their bodies and minds, bonding with one another and building wonderful memories all at once. Seeing how exhilarating, energizing and engaging this is for them, the changes of clothing, resulting extra laundry and muddy floors are a small tradeoff.

Avivah