Emotional Regulation

The children yearn for the mines.

Trees and grass and other green things around you in the garden have a positive psychological effect. The feeling of having done something visible has a positive psychological effect. Getting a physical workout has a positive psychological effect.
I know yours is a humorous comment, but a child digging in a garden has nothing to do with them yearning to be an early-capitalism style child laborer.
- We know...
- Jesus dude, go touch some grass.
  We all know it's bad for children to work in mines, its a joke.

I mean, yeah...

I grew up on a farm, if kids got too hype, they got chores.

If you keep a husky puppy locked up in an apartment all day, it's gonna act out and destroy shit and be difficult.

Same thing with a human kid.

You gotta let them burn that energy kut, giving them an iPad isn't going to make them tired.

Considering how humans evolved we're not that different from huskies. We're supposed to be walking 20 miles a day.
- Crazy thing is, walking 20 miles a day isn't burning that many calories. By the end of the day, if it is flat ground and you're used to it, 20 miles isn't even enough to be sore or tired…
giving them an iPad isn't going to make them tired.
Try putting it in nightmode to eliminate the blue light. /s

Children yearn for the mine.

A 6'x3' hole?

Little dude is chill now because he's dug your fucking grave, man!

Talk about cathartic. Everytime he feels like you're a dick to him, all he's gotta do is think of that hole waiting to swallow your body.

And he's got a blunt instrument with a handle to fix the size difference, that he's getting real good at wielding.

Hand him the shovel if you want, but don't turn your back.

Damn, that's one way to call someone short.
- Either short or a shallow ass grave.

Never underestimate the catharsis of digging a hole.

Unless you live on hardpan. Fuck hardpan.

I live in Houston. Everything is clay. That shit gets stuck to your shovel and does not come off.
That being said, we had some woods behind our house and we would play out there all the time. Digging, pellet guns, machetes to chop down trees and make forts.

Humans don't respond well to having nothing to do.

I respond pretty damn well to that
- for a week or two yes, but once the novelty of just chilling runs out you start feeling like shit
I have never met a human in my life, such a strange creatures

I'm on the spectrum and digging a hole, diggy diggy hole. Diggy diggy hole!

Guessing it's just the exercise? I feel more in control of my emotions after a nice long walk.

Sunlight too is incredibly important for mood
It's more about doing something they enjoy and find fulfilling

I had a great time with my brother in law a couple years ago shoveling snow off my parents drive....

So much so we continued into the road and did a houses length in each direction.

was fun (when we were done) watching cars struggle almost all the way up the road until they got to our bit, have a couple seconds of perfect driving experience, before re entering the icy hellscape.

I was sore the next day tho

Holes, a wildly popular movie about the very real problem of exploitative kids camps. And yet they persist...

The children yearn for the mines

Hell yeah! I did this kind of thing a lot with my kids. Give them a backpack, a flip phone, lunch and drinks and tell them to go explore a hill visible from the house.

I unwittingly terraformed a huge swath of land that started flooding when they flattened out the gravel road to our house over the course of a month or so with a spade when I was 10. This post is weirdly accurate.

I sometimes think of going back there to see what happened since but I'm not sure if someone lives there these days.

I love to dig. My dad used to get mad at me for failing classes in school, which happened often. He'd say, "Do you wanna go dig ditches for a living?!"

Now I'm a software developer and yeah I like it. It shuts my brain off. I wish I could do it part time or even just as an exercise but I live in a suburb and any time you want to dig you have to make a phone call and wait for someone to come out

Have you considered calling the locating service, get them to mark the entire yard, and then taking pictures so you know areas are okay to dig in going forward? I’ve been considering doing that for my yard just so I know where I can safely landscape.
- I've done it before! I think its illegal to dig before calling. A friend of mine was digging in his yard and found an underground cable of some kind, almost took it out with a spade. Probably would have cost a pretty penny, with court fees to boot! Maybe I should take an ad out and offer to help dig for people. Maybe i could get a couple jobs a week, and I would do it for free or travel money and pizza at least

Dad just learned about autism

So homeboy read holes right? Just needs to turn over a boat and hide peaches.

Future in land management

Dig it oh oh oh, dig it

This, but it's my ADHDAF ass stacking firewood with my dad. Eventually, when I was old enough, I even got to use the splitter and the sledgehammer. Now I'm a grown ass man and Pittsburgh is technically subtropical so he doesn't heat the house with wood anymore, but in years of studying I've never found a more effective meditation than 3 hours of splitting and stacking firewood.