“One of the things I love most about teaching Physie on a Saturday is watching our members do all sorts of things that have nothing to do with Physie!

I’m lucky enough to have lots of families with 3 or 4 members who are part of Rouse Hill Physie Club. They arrive early each Saturday at the preschoolers class for the youngest member of the family and stay throughout the day until mum joins the ladies class in the afternoon.

They arrive with bikes, balls and scooters and, despite the current trend of helicopter parenting, they spend the next few hours playing together without any direction or interference from adults.

Little ones are looked after by older kids who become their role models and mentors. They ride scooters, play ball games, make up their own dance routines and climb on anything that stands still long enough.

Playing is so important for children to build leg, arm and body strength and to develop fine and gross motor skills as well as social skills. Sometimes there are bumps and bruises but everyone survives and they only stop playing long enough to come inside for their physie lesson before returning to whatever happens outside.

My two favourite memories are the burial and elaborate funeral of a blue tongue lizard that lost a battle with a car and secondly, on the day of one of our fundraising drives, a spontaneous group of dancing kids dressed in all the empty boxes.

The kids aren’t the only ones who benefit from all this unstructured time. I see mums and physie ladies becoming the most amazing support network for each other. They laugh and cry together about whatever is going on in their lives and they help each other to manage the hectic schedule that comes with being a modern working mother.

It’s such a blessing to belong to this wonderful community that BjP Physie makes possible.” Linda