Fun for Lazy kids

[Druss]

Reading through this fills me with a dreadful feeling of despair...........what's happening to people? But as has been said above I admire you for trying so hard and not giving up with these kids; I only hope they come to
appreciate it sometime in the future. Best of luck to you in your endeavors

Thanks for that. I share that feeling of despair. Unfortunately i see more and more that these type kids aren't even rare. It doesn't look good for the future I'm afraid. Me and my wife are trying for kids and are determined that they will not be raised like this. I know it's easy to say when we don't have any like but we don't live our live sat staring at a TV so our kids will hopefully learn from that.

 

[Druss]

No offence intended whatsoever…..but no child exists in isolation, not in mainstream schooling. They might not have many 'friends' as you define them, but maybe (and yes, I do know many folks who genuinely do not want to be 'involved', who have an utter horror of having random bods associated with them as 'friends' on a constant basis ) they really are contented as they are…..and your viewpoint, is just that.
How obese are they ? really, on the scale of normal health and not the scale of the ultra fit and active lean who push everything to the limit ? How does a single parent manage to afford takeaways for every meal ? Lots of working couples couldn't manage that expense.

Nature not nurture is often overlooked when outsiders consider families who do not conform to their perception of how things ought to be.
I worked with a tremendous variety of children and young adults over the years.

Even those who totally immersed themselves in the computer world manage to thrive very well as adults. They relate well to those they work with, choose to associate with, but they're still computer geeks/nerds/gamers.

One neighbour complained to me a handful of years ago that he didn't know what he was going to do with his son. He spent all his time in his room on his computer. He didnae go out, he didnae have friends around, he didnae go after the girls, he just spent all his time on his own. His son went to Uni, graduated with a 2:1 Hons and in his second year of work earns three times what his father ever earned in a year.

It's all relative, is what I'm trying to say.
This community is very outdoors focused, very certain that that's the way children should be.
The reality is that modern life makes that outdoors largely unneccesary for most people.
Forcing them, or relentlessly telling them that they need to be out, they need to change, they need to have more friends, they need to be active, they need to change their diet, they need to be more like you……I wonder, how do they see you ?

M

No offence taken at all. The oldest is 16 stone, has literally no muscle at all, i'm talking not even under the fat. He has no strength at all. I too have seen kids who are into gaming go on and do well, one friend of the family has just gone to uni to become a games designer. But this kid has no interest in his computer outside of games. He doesn't know how to do anything on it at all. Installing mods for games for example is a really easy process. Even if you don't know typing one sentence into google will tell you in seconds, "download file - put file in this folder" but what he does is ask me if i can do it for him, i showed him a couple of times and refuse to do it any more telling hime he's more than capable of doing it himself. He will just do without the mod rather than use google and do a bit of reading. His mock exam results suggest that he has no chance of going to uni in the future unless he really works hard and pulls it round. he has no interest in doing this at all though. When he stays at ours if he has homework to do I have seen him stare at a sheet of A4 paper he has to read for over an hour and still not have read it, not because he can't but because he can't be bothered. He really does have no friends though I am afraid. He was bullied a lot at school and been allowed to shut himself away in his room means he is not good socially at all.

But I am just his uncle by marriage. I'm doing what I can to try to help him but he is not my kid at the end of the day. That's the thing he has taken a liking to me and I think it's just that he has never had a male influence in his life. He says he wants to come camping with us, we never force them to do anything and he knows if he doesn't want to come he doesn't have to. He saw our tent up one day when we were airing it out in the mother in laws garden and took an interest, it was him that asked if we would take him camping with us and we obliged. This is what is driving me mad, he says he wants to go yet seems like he's doesn't want to be there when he goes and sulks a lot.

 

[Toddy]

Do you make things ? as in household stuff, I mean. Decorating, laying carpets, new flooring, bricklaying, slabbing, that kind of thing ?
Make them feel useful, even if it's just as an extra pair of hands, and they'll soon start to build up the hand/eye/brain connections. Take them (or at least the eldest) with you when you go to buy supplies. He's there to help you, but you'll probably need to be quite clear about what help you need to begin with. Quietly just explain from the ground up. No experience, then he's ripe to learn, to pick it up.
If you can't make him enthused about being active, you can at least encourage him to be practically active.
Thing about that kind of learning is though, that when the younger one comes along, then the elder one is encouraged to reafirm his own knowledge by teaching him.

I am minded of a conference I attended several years ago. There was a very bright and bouncy and cheerful and incessantly upbeat young lady expounding the belief that the majority of children that we would interact with needed hands on experience to learn. That they were Kinesthetic learners….and since we were all hands on people we should use that with all the groups we taught since they were in the majority and the other types of learners had kinesthetic tendencies as their secondary learning methodology.
Then I added up her figures……the largest single group might be kinesthetic learners, but the other two main groups outnumbers those learners. Auditory and Visual learners are often encouraged to be kinesthetic learners when that is not how they actually learn best.
Humanity learns from listening, from seeing, every bit as much as from 'doing'.

I am rarely a fan of youtube, it has just so much dross, and life is busy and all too short, but, and it's a big but, there are an awful lot of people whose opinion I value who post their carefully selected links. Those might be worth while finding and perhaps emailing to your nephews. It's a good way to absorb learning that does encourage people to 'get out there and do it'

M

 

[Lupis]

Sounds to me like they may only be motivated by rewards. Play them off against each other. And be specific. Instead of seeing who can get the most wood, tell them the first to get 20 sticks 2 feet long and as thick as your thumb (or whatever you fancy) gets a reward (probably sweets from what you have said). The loser gets nada. They can choose 1 piece of equipment to take with them, so it could be bag so they aren't having to make multiple trips, or a pruning saw so they could cut larger pieces down rather than trying to find lots of bits the right size etc. But emphasize the rewards and of course gloating rights over their brother.

On a slightly more serious note would it be worth getting them checked for diabetes, there may be a medical reason they have no energy?

 

[StJon]

An other thing you could try is treasure hunt, easy to start with, five different leaves, five different grasses, five different insects, etc. Then move it up a level with identification, you provide pictures of the treasure. Team building games can be fun, loads via the web, like moving toxic waist, crossing a gap, egg drop. As you progress introduce small, easily achievable skills. Hope that gives something to go on and well done on you being a good uncle.