Wake up with enthusiasm.
Especially on the weekends, when those around you would prefer to be sleeping. Open their door as soon as the faintest amount of pre-dawn light is perceptible, and say, in your cheeriest and loudest morning voice, “Time to wake up! It's morning! Who wants to come play?” And then refuse to leave the bedroom until someone agrees to get up with you. Actually, the agreement alone is not enough; history has taught you that these people will say just about anything to get you to leave their room so they can have a few more seconds of rest. You must be adamant that one of them has to come with you. Just sit down and wait, asking every, say, seven seconds or so if they are ready yet. Once you succeed in separating at least one big person from their sleep, bed, sense of peace -- and by all means before they can ingest any caffeine -- be sure to riddle them with as many questions as possible. And present them with multiple options in a row for your entertainment: "Do you want to build this car kit? Ok, let's do this Lego helicopter. What if we make a gnome village? Or would you rather have a pillow-fight? Or... Dad, you don't have to yell."
Continue to create and recreate the world around you.
If the world around you doesn’t look exactly like you want it to, then you just have to make some adjustments. Those adjustments might look like structures made of rocks and mud and pinecones (in the house, of course), or beads and yarn and leaves and acorns that you have collected for years, all strung together in a complex maze throughout your room (or maybe someplace more public, say, the kitchen), or a compilation of every stuffy you own stacked together with every pillow in the house and built just on the inside of your bedroom door, where no one will be able to enter or exit your room without dismantling it completely, and of course there is the quintessential living room fort, which requires you to collect every blanket in the house and to rearrange every stick of furniture in a 50-foot radius and then re-imagine them all as walls and ceilings and hidden paths for your secret lair.
Be a force of nature.
What are you going to do with your one wild and precious life? Anything you can get away with. Anything. Beware any mere mortal who dares to stand in your path, attempt to redirect your energy, or be foolish enough to say the word, no.
Be generous with your gifts.
Make stuff for your friends and family as often as possible. Make sure that whatever you are making includes at least five different materials, including glue, glitter (and as often as possible, glitter glue), tape, staples, crayons, colored pencils, markers, paint, colored paper, and material scraps (including old clothes from your parents, or clothes you at least believe are old). Always feel free to borrow from other projects already in progress throughout the house, including leaves, rocks, acorns, pine needles, yarn, and paper scraps. Always use your parents' best scissors to cut your materials (those craft scissors they gave you are crap). Make enough crafts for everyone in your class and bug your parents endlessly until they help you spell each of your friend's names for the tags.
Demand more from life.
Don’t settle for gifts only on designated holidays or birthdays. Demand that life give you gifts almost daily. Especially if you find yourself within 100 yards of a store of any kind. Rinse and repeat.
Question everything.
And I mean absolutely everything that anyone (especially one of your parents) tells you. There is a whole lot of bad information out there. And young children are especially tapped into this phenomenon. In fact, consider setting up your own fact-checking organization, because no one is as relentless at arguing the accuracy of alleged facts than young children.
Play hard.
Do not settle for anything less than sweaty, muddy, wet, stained, leaf and grass-covered, pant-torn (preferably both knees), skin-abrased, stolen-candy-fueled, screaming, toy-abusing, climbing-higher-than-you-know-you-should-on-any-available-tree-or-structure, tennis shoe-thrashing, yard-destroying, neighbor-disturbing, just-shy-of-parent-coronary-causing fun.
Stay in your pajamas as long as possible.
This is the number one rule of all time. All other rules could fall by the wayside to save this one thing. Also, the more the other rules can be combined with this one, the better. Torn and mud-stained pajamas are a sign of the ultimate victory.
Yes to all of this! Can we send this to our Wellness Playground participants?!