Experience a real adventure with your child
I don't know exactly why they always wanted to hear about how I once capsized in a canoe as a child and almost drowned. Why they couldn't get enough of the story when we shot at books with an air rifle to see whose bullet made it to which number of pages.
Maybe they liked the fact that their father had also done forbidden things, that he had once been like them: an adventurer. Whatever the case, I always enjoyed telling the stories because they also did something to me: Telling them brought back that special childhood feeling.
A night hike in the forest is a great adventure full of danger for the five-year-old son.
Sven Wehde
That strange mixture of fear and curiosity for which there is no name, but which was a constant companion in childhood. A feeling that, to be honest, I rarely experience today. And that's exactly what a recently published book is about. It's called «Adventures with Children» and was written by the German journalist Sven Wehde.
The book begins with a crisis: the author is stressed out, the phone is ringing off the hook, he has a ton of appointments at the office and family commitments at home - and can't cope with either. He wants to spend more time with his children, but cannot neglect his work.
So he asks himself: How can I use the time with my family more intensively? How can we experience things that my children will remember? The answer is the book. The father decided to go on adventures with his children - aged 13, 8 and 5. Real adventures.
What is a real adventure? That depends on the observer's point of view. A night walk in the forest, writes Wehde, «is probably a walk for most adults, but for my five-year-old son Mats it is a great adventure full of danger».
For real adventures, you don't need a lot of knowledge or money, but plenty of imagination and a bit of courage.
Night hikes, not alpine pass hikes: That is the altitude of the book. These are adventures, in the literal sense of the word, for which you don't need a lot of knowledge or a lot of money, but plenty of imagination and a bit of courage. The chapters have wonderful titles such as «On your doorstep», «Walking barefoot», «Sleeping in the car» or «The ten-minute November adventure».
The best thing about the book, however, is that the author sends himself through the story as the most ridiculous hero (at the beginning he describes himself as follows: «Self-image: daring adventurer and fit as a fiddle. Affectionate critics would say: big kid with excess weight»). Wehde seems to have internalised that in writing, as in life, it is important not to take yourself too seriously.
At the end of the quickly read 241 pages, a mood crept up in me that I never thought I would feel: I was a little wistful that I no longer have young children. That I hadn't read this book earlier. That I hadn't been an adventurous father like Wehde. And then I thought that I might be a grandfather one day.
