Boys and sticks

The little film is lovely too Greta!
I've watched it more than once.

Yes deff boys with sticks...when we are walking my Gs whos 4 picks up the Biggest! stick he can find,, some of them resembling half a tree trunk !!

My grandson does it too.
The stick becomes a gun, a sword, or a walking cane.

With my daughter it was stones.

Definitely a primeval urge.

We often walk in the local forest with our DGS.

DH and boys will immediatly look for sticks that are just right size.
Quite often finding better ones along the way.
My pockets are always full of stones, cones and acorns.

Not long ago we were all down a big hole playing volcanos (as you do)
Grandad and the wee ones managed out of the 'volcano', but Gran was stuck.
As the sides were so steep and slippy, I had to be pulled out holding on to grandads stick, to much giggling from the boys and a further explanation from DH regarding the usefulness of sticks.

Dogs are often partial to a stick or in my sisters dogs case that also includes stones and pine cones and any tatty old balls they can find.

Our DGS's also like sticks but DGD went through a phase where she had to have her pockets stuffed full of 'pretty' stones, fir cones, bits of bark, bits of moss etc. etc. - not good when it came to be washed.

This thread reminds me of a walk in the woods with one of my daughters when she was of pre-school age. She had acquired a substantial stick on the stroll and went on a little ahead of us, accompanied by our little dog.

I saw they had both stopped and were investigating something. Upon closer inspection, it was a dead fox. Dd then flipped it over with her stick and it was utterly rotten on the underneath side, humming with flies and stinking to high heaven! Dd (and probably the dog agreed) declared it one of the best walks she'd ever been on.

OH came home with a very big stick again today (no children or GC for an excuse - only the dog). Another one to add to the collection in the garage. The dog prefers his ball!!

Stick Man's delightful. I swear DH picked him up in the park the other day - we put him back there to continue his adventures after the DGS had all had a look at him!

DGS1 and DGS3 like trailing sticks behind them, DGS2 is our stone collector. He takes a couple of new ones home every day in his pocket (or in mine, if I'm on duty - I found one in the lining of my coat recently). Last week he was telling me that his mum and dad kept his vast stone collection safely in the cellar. It's a good job he's not allowed down there.

I have never taken a son or GS for a walk without him quickly searching out the very best example of a stick he could find!
They are variously utilised as pointers of the way, slashers of undergrowth, rifles, machine guns (eldest son saved me from my obliviousness to numerous wolves and bears in this manner). Youngest son had a collection of magic wands. One was left on the school bus to his great distress and he was thrilled when the driver produced it for him the next day, thus confirming its magical properties

My DGD was always picking up anything "shiny", including coins. These would then be left in pockets ....

One of my granddaughters is a relentless stone collector. Funny as her mum was exactly the same

I never visit a beach without finding an interesting pebble to bring home. I'm neither male nor young.

My 22 month old GS will always find a stick in the garden. He loves being outdoors. He got into trouble at nursery yesterday for throwing soil at another child. He had to go for "thinking time". This is his first experience of being naughty.

Six year old grandson has finally stopped picking up and bringing home sticks from every walk - he has now discovered hockey!!!

Ah the innocence of youth! Sticks and stones, what fun!

Mu grandson aged 6 had a little friend, same age, who had a glass jar in which he kept his bogies. He had seemed a nice little boy until I heard about it .

Oh yuk Annaraml. I hope he never used them for anything!

We have sticks left in the front garden but they're collected by the dog. He also collects lost tennis balls...even in areas where dogs are rarely walked he manages to find them.

It's shells that I collect...wild flowers when I was young.

My oldest grandson is 9 and still cannot pass a ‘good stick’ without picking it up and taking it home where it is just discarded in the garden ?

My first husband told me when he was a mere 12 years old a local girl of similar age who had somewhat 'dubious' morals took him into the bushes and said 'Come on then'.

I said 'What did you do?'

He said 'I hit her with a stick and ran away'.

So they do come in handy at times

What a funny thread .
I must be strange because when I was a child I liked to find a stick and carefully strip off the bark, to make it bendy.
One of my DGDs does the same thing, and makes bows and arrows.

This brought back happy memories.

Eldest grandson, now mid-teens, was an avid stick collector. The sticks had to accompany him all the way home. If we were fortunate, he could be persuaded to 'park' the stick in the porch. The stick pile eventually became many many feet high before 'the fairies' took them all away one evening..... and then it all began again!

yes it's my opinion that it's Axel Scheffler's illustrations that made Julie Donaldson' s books - not so much her storylines !

St icks are ri te of passage for boys, and sometimes girls. At the end of every summer I have a huge collection of stock in our gite, treasures that parents have refused to take home.

My D GD and her new best friend, who was staying in our gite last summer, spent a week collecting and training large racing snails, hundreds of them!

My gd always brought a stick home with her after we had been for a walk in the park or woods. We used to put them in the cupboard and get rid of them secretly, then we would come back with more, quite big ones at times, she’s now 18 and grew out of that a long time ago. Happy days.