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Is Your Kid a Runner, a Climber, or a Thrower This Summer? Watch your kid in the backyard for about ten minutes and they will tell you exactly what kind...
Watch your kid in the backyard for about ten minutes and they will tell you exactly what kind of player they are. No survey needed. Some kids run. They circle the yard, they chase, they cannot sit still, and they are happiest with wind in their face. Some kids climb. They find the tallest thing available and go up it, and if there is nothing to climb, they will invent one. And some kids throw. Everything is a projectile, everything is a target, and the whole world is a game of catch waiting to happen.
Knowing which one you have is the whole trick to a good summer. Because the toy that makes a runner light up will bore a climber flat, and the thing a thrower plays with all afternoon will sit untouched in the grass if you handed it to a runner. A toy is a tool. If it does not match the kid, it never gets picked up, and the fun you were hoping for never shows up either.
So here in Nashville, with the trails and the open yards and long July evenings that do not quit until nearly nine, let's figure out who you're working with.
This is the kid who treats the backyard like a track. They are not building anything or aiming at anything. They just want to move, and they want a reason to keep moving. Structured chasing is the sweet spot here. Games with a start and a chase and a finish give the running a shape, which is what turns "kid running in circles" into "kid playing for forty-five minutes and coming in genuinely tired."
Runners also love anything that adds a little unpredictability to the motion. A ball that bounces funny, a target they have to sprint to, a game where the rules change on the fly. If your kid is the one begging to walk the trails at Brown County State Park and still has gas in the tank at the end, you have a runner, and the goal is simply to feed that engine without you having to be the one being chased every single evening.
The climber is looking for a challenge, not just an activity. They want to test what their body can do, and honestly, that instinct is worth protecting. Climbing builds real strength, balance, and the kind of body awareness that keeps kids steadier on their feet. The tricky part for parents is that climbers get bored the second something is too easy, and they get frustrated the second something is too hard. The good stuff lives right in the middle, at the edge of what they can just barely do.
For this kid, think in terms of physical problem-solving. Things that make them figure out where to put a hand, how to balance, how to get from here to there. A climber who has something safe and satisfying to conquer is a climber who is not eyeing the top of your bookshelf. The CDC's guidance on active play for children points to about an hour of movement a day, and a natural climber will hit that without ever knowing they're doing it, as long as what's in front of them is interesting enough to keep going back to.
Every parent of a thrower knows the sound of something hitting the fence at high speed. This kid is all about aim, release, and the little thrill of hitting what they were pointing at. Throwing is not a phase to be managed. It is a whole skill set: hand-eye coordination, timing, judging distance, that quiet satisfaction of a shot that lands where you meant it to.
The move with a thrower is to give the throwing a purpose. Targets, catch games, anything with a "did you get it?" built in. A thrower with a good target will practice happily for a long stretch, and they have no idea they're sharpening coordination the whole time, because to them it just feels like a game. That's play doing its quiet work. The skill gets built without it ever feeling like practice.
Plenty of kids are a runner one afternoon and a thrower the next. Some are all three by dinner. That is not a problem to solve, it just means the summer needs a little variety in it. This is honestly where a lot of families get stuck, standing in front of a wall of outdoor stuff online, trying to guess which thing their specific kid will actually reach for instead of the one that ends up face-down in the grass by week two.
That guessing is the part we take off your plate. Our free Let Us Shop for You service is built for exactly this. You leave a note in your cart telling us about your kid, and yes, "she runs everywhere and never stops" or "he throws anything he can pick up" is perfect information for us. Our Active and Outdoor Package pulls together toys that match how your kid actually plays, built to whatever budget tier you pick, and we ship it wrapped with a handwritten card. It can come to your door or straight to a grandkid across the country whose parents just described a little climber over the phone.
Fifty-five years of watching kids play in this store has taught us one thing above all. The best summer toy is not the fanciest one. It is the one that matches the kid in front of you, the one that keeps getting picked back up. Tell us who your kid is this summer, and we'll match the tool to the job.