Boys and sticks

Not sticks, but fir cones. I used to gather them up and play with them as a child, and my DGS, when he was a toddler would pick them up and give them to me to carry when we were out with my dogs.

When I was 10, I used to walk home from school through some woods, for lunch.

I found a lovely stick that I used as a walking stick, and for the whole of that year I would hide it in the bushes at each end of the woods and retrieve it on my next next walk.
I wouldn't have dreamed of taking it home with me - as a girl of that age, I don't think it would have been considered 'normal'! Ah, nice memories ☺

I think this shows that even if children were raised as "gender fluid" evolution will still win. My three grandsons all love a nice stick which becomes a sword or gun or just something to poke about with.

breeze. Good for him.

I suspect some boys never grow out of collecting sticks. As I drove home tonight along a country road I spotted an elderly man using a large stick to prod and poke around in an overgrown road verge. There didn't seem to be a dog anywhere around so goodness knows what he was doing!

Also, if you watch this little film about the Severn Bore, there's a small boy with stick at approx 9 seconds in.

My granddaughters 3 in number have always collected stones. My daughter does a wonderful "Return stones to the sea" ceremony. They find it very acceptable, I find it hilarious.!!

Our sons never bothered much with sticks but they often came home with interesting stones and pebbles, especially 'lucky's ones with holes in them. Our grandaughters collect shells, beetles, other peoples loose change, and coughs and colds which they're very generous about sharing unfortunately.

My grandson always picked up sticks ...the bigger the better. I have a large flowerpot outside my front door where he has to put them . They are still there and he’s 11 and hasn’t brought a stick home in years. My granddaughter brings snails...wood lice....worms .... spiders , in fact anything she can find into the house if I don’t catch her first. One day I said ...enough with the creepies...so I had to put them all into a shoe box and take her and them on two buses to her house where mum was expected to welcome them with open arms. She told her mum that nannies house is too clean for bugs....but they’ll be alright at her house.Daughter NOT amused!!

Both my GD and GS have to have a stick of some sort when out for a walk. The GD also collects stones, her pockets are always full of them. I currently have an old frying pan filled with them, lying outside the playhouse door. Last year we collected big stones, the two GC painted them then we placed them in the nearby wood as part if the 'stone trail'.

I don’t think you ever lose the urge to collect things. I have a jar of pebbles I have been adding the odd one to for years, but now my obsession is sea glass and I can’t be on a beach without looking for it, which makes it very tedious for those I am with as it takes us ages to get anywhere. They generally b****r off and leave me to it!

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.

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!

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

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!

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.

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

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 ?

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

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.

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

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 .

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

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.

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

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