My husband on the swings the first day of his retirement three years ago.

So perhaps the headline a tad misleading. Debi Pearl of No Greater Joy isn’t a swinger as in a wife-swapper. She’s literally a swinger on the kids swings at the park. Oh, now that’s a sight I would like to see for giggles!

This is from the current No Greater Joy Magazine, that publication that is sort of like receiving a strange funny gift six times a year. Today’s post comes from a piece by Debi Pearl called “Put Your Eyeballs on Me” and it’s about paying attention to your child, really, REALLY looking at him.

Is not looking at your child some sort of real problem out there like Debi tries to say here? Or is it just among the kinds of people Debi Pearl called ‘Unbelievers’? We all look at our kids all sorts of times multiple times a day. Is a reminder really necessary?

Or is there just another opportunity for Debi to go off on that most hated of modern devices the cell phone? To listen to Mike and Debi you might conclude that the cell phone was invented by Satan, just to carry porn into the lives of sweet innocent boys, Amish and otherwise. Remember the Amish boy with the pile of Trac phones just for porn? What about the recent post when the young man proudly telling a stranger he does not have a smart phone so he can stay away from porn?

Cell phones are considered portals to hell in rural Tennessee apparently. Now she’s hating for a different reason.

This evening I went to the park to swing. Swinging hard 50 times back and forth is good exercise for a senior citizen and it helps loosen up my neck. I go most every day for a 5- to 10-minute swing. As I rushed to the swing set, I passed a dad sitting on the park bench. He was looking intently at his cell phone. There on the climbing bars was his 4-year-old son, climbing while constantly looking over his shoulder at his dad to see if his “eyeballs were on him.” I could see disappointment in the little guy’s face as his shoulders slouched and he sat still. My grandma instinct got the better of me: I hit the lazy dad violently over the head with my fanny-pack and told him to get his sorry self over there to play with his son.

Actually, I didn’t really hit him, but I did think it real hard in case he had the gift of telepathy. Instead, I gently and sweetly said like the nice old lady that I am, “Your son would like his play a whole lot better if you climbed with him.” The dad didn’t take offense, nor did he take the obvious hint, but mumbled, “Yeah, well…” and down his eyeballs went to the phone as if glued to the screen.

That guy is one dumb dad and someday he will be so sorry.

Cannot you just see Debi pushing past toddlers and moms to get to the swings, wearing her fanny pack, stopping just to throw shade at some dad. Maybe it was work related? Maybe he was playing a round of Candy Crush in an attempt to keep his sanity after a full day spend in the rigorous demands of a toddler? My point being that since Debi cannot read minds she has no idea what’s really going on here. This is why judging total strangers over things you have no real information on is pretty foolish.

Plus…………… ITS NONE OF HER BUSINESS!

She’s lucky the guy didn’t response with a one finger salute or a ‘Thanks for the advice you old biddy!’

About that swinging for neck pain.. I don’t know if it helps or not and there’s nothing about it at legitimate medical sites. Most advice says gentle stretching, orthopedic pillows at night, mild exercises and physical therapy. No mention of swinging that I could find.

I wonder if this is one of those simple solutions to complex problems that are so popular in Quiverfull that do not involve anything medical. If it makes her neck feel better more power to her. But it seems to me that it might be prone to the jerking motion they advise you against.

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