I've known about the benefits of grounding or Earthing for a long time. If you've ever had a crabby baby, you know that most of the time, you can turn this around by simply going outside and getting some fresh air and sunlight. We've always tried to get outside everyday, even if it's just for 20 minutes to walk the dogs. If you're a midwesterner like me, you know that sometimes in the middle of winter, or the middle of summer this can be quite miserable.
Once our baby began to crawl and stand, we started taking him to local parks and letting him explore new things. In the fall of 2021 I happened upon a local moms group on facebook and went to their meet and greet event at a park near my house. They host multiple events a week, most of which are park or trail meet-ups. We do about one indoor event a week. All of these are come and go as you're able, and they've been wonderful. They're really good at choosing new parks to check out each week. My son is 18 months old, so not super interested in playing with kids, but at this stage parallel play is still very important. We also joined a nature play center one day a week for their Parent-Tot Discovery Group which is an hour and fifteen minutes a week.
Near the end of 2021, a mom in my group mentioned that they almost reached their goal of 1,000 hours outside and needed to print their tracker for 2022. With as much time as we like to spend outside I figured we could meet that. Of course, in January we're not on our 3 hour a day track. At this point, some is better than none, and when the weather is more mild, we can spend longer hours outside. We luckily have a fenced in yard and work from home, so we can take our laptops to the patio and let the baby run and play with the dogs. We have a sand & water table, and all sorts of other outdoor sports toys. If you don't have these, they are usually very affordable on Facebook Marketplace. You can also do toddler- led walks through the neighborhood, find scavenger hunts on pinterest to follow, take outdoor naps (my kid won't unfortunately), and eat meals outside.
Of course, the right gear for staying dry and warm in the winter, or cool in the summer is very important. Our pediatrician says "there's no such thing as bad weather, just bad gear." We have invested quite a bit of money into winter weather toddler gear. Luckily, my husband and I already had ours from tailgating at Chiefs games. I'll attach a blog post with outdoor gear recommendations.
Benefits of Earthing: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3265077/
1,000 Hours Outside Website: https://www.1000hoursoutside.com/
We use their tracking app, I think it cost $3, when we get home we color in the circles on our paper tracker. Our toddler is a little too young for this right now, but I imagine he will really love to see it the older he gets.