Two days after the mid-March moved through my hometown of Boulder, Colorado, the clouds lifted, the sun glared in the sky, and all of the kids at my sons鈥 elementary school wore shorts. The heat melted the snow and transformed the school grounds into a massive mud hole. With no after-school activities, I let my boys loose鈥攁long with about a dozen friends鈥攁nd within minutes, they were unrecognizable.
Mud clumped in their hair and filled their shoes. Their clothes turned an ugly brown. They used the earth to paint lines and dots on their foreheads and cheeks.
I loved it. Another mom wrung her hands before leaning into me conspiratorially and saying she had a basketball in her car.
鈥淎nd?鈥 I asked.
鈥淲e could distract them from the mud.鈥
As if anything could distract a kid from rolling around in cool聽muddy mud. Put simply: Kids love to get dirty. They splash in puddles and roll around in dry dirt, or they shuffle their feet聽so they look like a walking, talking version of Pigpen from 鈥淧eanuts.鈥 In my nine years as a parent聽I have learned that, given the chance, kids will get dirty鈥攊f their parents let them.
I almost always let them.
When a kid gets dirty out in the world, it鈥檚 almost entirely on their聽terms. They聽become聽the boss of their聽body.
There are few things kids can control in their own lives. From the minute they鈥檙e born (and even before that), they鈥檙e monitored and regulated and socialized. It happens before you even know it: pediatricians charting an infant鈥檚 weight and length within hours of their birth聽and then continuing to do so throughout childhood. Preschool teachers holding conferences with parents where they discuss, in all seriousness, a four-year-old鈥檚 aptitude when it comes to painting or sharing. Team sports, music lessons, drama classes, and more starting in kindergarten and ratcheting up in intensity all the way through high school. Rules and homework and discipline.
I鈥檓 glad for these social mores鈥擨 don鈥檛 want to raise kids who are assholes. But I also want to encourage independence 补苍诲听help my kids experience that ineffable feeling of an untroubled mind and body acting in unison.
It鈥檚 not always easy. Dirt helps.
When a kid gets dirty out in the world, it鈥檚 almost entirely on their聽terms. They聽become聽the boss of their聽body. Their聽imagination goes into overdrive, and they聽experience聽the independence and thrill of flaunting social expectations that say they聽ought not get filthy.
Playing in the dirt is also good for kids鈥 . Ours is a mostly sanitized society and has become much more so since the industrial revolution. With the majority of citizens living in cities and suburbs, as opposed to farms, kids are less exposed to microbes and other healthy bacteria. that lack of such exposure can contribute to the onset of chronic inflammatory disorders and allergies. In the dirt (with the obvious exception of dirt that is known to be polluted), kids excavate microbes and other bacteria that bolster their systems.
Save for the possibility of ruining some clothes (but you didn鈥檛 send them off in their most precious duds, did you?) or getting cold when the mud dries and the sun goes behind the clouds, there鈥檚 very little risk to letting kids get dirty. The rewards, by contrast, are high.
At the end of my boys鈥 muddy day in March, they were covered head to toe. They had an exuberance to them, and they bellowed in glee as we walked home. That night聽they showered, cleaned the bathtub, and then showered again. They ate heartily at dinner and cheerfully helped tidy聽up afterward. Both boys went to bed early and fell asleep without fuss. Whether there鈥檚 a smudge or an entire layer of muck on that joyful youngin鈥, my only bit of advice is to roll with it. Better to have a happy kid and dirty towels than a clean, sanitized one whining that there鈥檚 nothing to do.