For Kids, It’s Water Sports : Youngsters Delight in Storm’s Mud and Puddles, to Moms’ Chagrin

As school let out in Ventura, 7-year-old Brock Warmuth stopped at the park and dipped his hands deep in the mud left from last week’s torrent.

“The mud is fun,” Brock giggled to his mother, Stacey Warmuth, wiping his hands on his pants. “You can make mud pies with it, put Graham crackers on top and make your friends eat it!”

Stacey rolled her eyes. “Yummy.”

In Thousand Oaks, 4-year-old Anthony Cerrotta ignored his mother’s calls from the edge of the softball diamond and made a beeline for the biggest puddle in Borchard Park.

As he circled the infield, his mother, Lisa Cerrotta, called out, “Stay out of the mud!” Then, watching a moment more as he planted his boot in the muck, she smiled, “Oh, well.”

Science offers no proof of it, but after this week, many Ventura County parents may swear that children’s feet are pulled magnetically to a puddle of water and that mud loves clean children’s clothing.

As water collected in parks and on playgrounds across the county, modern parents’ most powerful weapons--sturdy boots, body-length slickers and strong admonitions--were no match for the power of post-storm play.

“It’s like a calling card,” said first-grade teacher Susan Lane. “They wouldn’t be kids if they came in from recess clean.”

Muddy children may bring a smile to some, but Lane said her experience teaches that there are two types of parents--those who think about the laundry they have coming and those who don’t.

At the end of the day at Junipero Serra Elementary School in Ventura, Warmuth revealed without hesitation that, after a big rain, she thinks about laundry plenty.

As her kids wound their way on and off the sidewalk and into her car, she knew she would pay a price for her son’s detour into the sludge-filled park behind the school.

“One step in the car and he’s already ruined two jackets and a car seat,” Warmuth sighed. “That’s why moms are generally opposed to mud.”

But after a prolonged storm, she admitted, it’s tough to keep the kids from roaming out.

Marylou Smith said she brought her son to Borchard Park on Thursday, after he had been trapped indoors with a cold.

“He needed to get outside,” she said. “I figure if I dress him warm and fill him up with vitamins, that’s about all I can do. It’s better than keeping him cooped up.”

Perhaps surprisingly, medical experts couldn’t agree more.

Ventura County’s health officer, Dr. Gary Feldman, explained that the very name cold is a misnomer, since no study has been able to link the sniffles with a tromp through the water on a chilly day.

“They’ve actually done a number of studies where they chill people to see if there’s a higher risk of catching cold, and it came up empty,” Feldman said. “But that goes against every fiber of our folk knowledge, so I’ll say it’s an open question.”

As for the children’s mental health, the theory about a magnetic attraction to mud and water may not be so far afield.

Thousand Oaks psychologist Elizabeth Beale said children have a primal attraction to mud and puddles and to prevent them from frolicking can stifle a child’s creativity.

“For them it’s a fascination with the world,” Beale explained. “They have no qualms about the squishiness that an adult might have. They find in the mud a pure exhilaration and joy.”

Notice, said first-grade teacher Lane, and you will see the children mesmerized by the water as it splashes up on them and the mud as it slides from under their shoes.

“For them it’s like every experience is new,” Lane said. “It’s very refreshing. Very innocent.”

Eight-year-old Christopher Smith offered his own analysis as he hung from the bars of the water-washed bleachers at the park.

“Splashing in the water is fun because you get all wet,” Chris said, pausing briefly before jumping down and into the biggest puddle in sight.

“You get all wet and you get all muddy,” he laughed. “It’s great!”