Auntie’s events: Teach your children how to move

(Photo/Softstar Shoes)

The world is changing. That’s not news to anyone who has access to a history book much less their own memory.

My daughter, who grew up in Spokane during the 1980s and ’90s, likes to talk about the freedom she felt riding bikes with her friends all over the South Hill – without, she recalls, a lot of parental supervision.

I’m not sure she’s remembering things quite so accurately. But she is correct: Her mother and I, even after we divorced, were not what is known as helicopter parents.

Again, though, times have changed. And particularly so since early 2020 when COVID-19 entered the scene, forcing most of us to spend time inside our homes, communing with the rest of the world through digital means (hello Zoom ).

Katy Bowman understands how difficult that experience was – and, for some parents among us, continues to be. That’s why she wrote the book “Grow Wild,” which carries as a tagline “The Whole-Child, Whole-Family, Nature-Rich Guide to Moving More.”

And thanks to Auntie’s Bookstore , Bowman will be in Spokane on Monday to lead an in-person on how to – in Auntie’s parlance – teach you “to inject movement into your kids’ everyday lives and turn them into wild movers.”

The event will take place at 7 p.m. Monday outside, in the fresh air, at Spokane’s Coeur d’Alene Park . Bowman will both engage in a Q&A session and be available to sign copies of her book.

The event is free. And being in a park, it’ll be easily accessible. And healthy.

Especially for the kinds of bike-riding kids my daughter remembers being.