We don’t play in mud puddles.
It’s true we have a no puddle policy at our house.
Before we get into it, there’s some fine print — talking about farm safety makes me feel superstitious. I don’t love to do this and don’t come doing this from a place where our habits are solid. We’re a work in progress! Also, my kids are small: 6 months – 5.5 years old.
Reasons we don’t do puddles:
1. We have cows. Some of our puddles are in pens or have drained from pens. It’s not clean water.
2. We’re working on mindfulness of making it through the day in our clothes and shoes. What happens when we get soaked in the morning? It’s going to be a long day in wet clothes if it’s warm out. If it’s cold, that’s potentially life threatening. We talk about carelessness and taking care of ourselves. While we’re on the subject of mindfulness we also talk about if we can see the bottom of a puddle and how unsafe it is to enter water without knowing how deep it is.
3. Safety — the main objective. With 4 small kids I’ve found clear boundaries work the best for us at this stage. No puddles. While we’re working I need to trust that I can blink or turn my head for 5 seconds and they’ll all know that we don’t head for a puddle.
Don’t worry we play with water outside in the summer because water is so fun! Some of our favorite activities are watering plants, running through the sprinkler, playing in a baby pool, and Kade is always building culverts, drains, rivers and dams. We talk about how the water is clean from the well, clear so we can see the bottom, and we have dry clothes lined up for when we’re done.
We’ve also had an exception day where they played in a mud hole with clean rain water while we were building the shop. We had a great discussion about why we were having an exception and why I trusted the oldest two to understand. I can see how this will adapt as they grow, but right now the no puddle policy feels the safest for all of us.