Here at Kids Crooked House HQ we use the term "active play" a lot, but it's occurred to me recently that the term is pretty much meaningless to people who aren't "in the business."

So, what's "active play"?

Well, let me tell you a little story. Recently, our family was doing some camping on a lake here in Maine when we thought it would be a good idea to invite over one of our daughter's friends to come out and play around the camp, do some hiking and swimming, then maybe roast a few marshmallows.

"Nah," said the friend's mom. "Today we're doing some yard-saleing, then we gotta go to Wal-Mart."

Going yard-saleing and shopping at Wal-Mart is not active play. Does it surprise you that this young man, our daughter's friend, is obese?

I remember asking him, one time when he was over the house to play, what he enjoyed doing. "Playing video games," he said. Me, too, I said. But what else, I asked? He just shrugged his shoulders. A seven-year-old boy who can't come up with a single thing he likes to do except play video games. Dang if that didn't make me sad.

Are his parents bad people? Of course not. But do they understand what we believe to be the benefits of active play? No, they really don't. Somewhere along the line as they went about their lives, they forgot what it was like to be a kid. The joys of running just because it feels good to go fast. The joys of throwing things just to see how far they'll go. The joys of pretending to be Luke Skywalker or David Ortiz or Lance Armstrong or a firefighter or a policeman or an Army guy.

It can be so easy to stick our kids in front of a video game and let them veg out so we can finish up with the housework while they play. We know they won't bother us because those games are so fun it's really had to put them down. Believe me, I know. My wife got me the new Mario game for the Wii for my birthday and I've spent hours playing it. But I'm an adult, and I know that when my back hurts and my eyes are going blurry, maybe it's time to get a run in.

Kids, unfortunately, almost like dogs who don't know when to stop eating, don't have that governor switch.

And I know you think the kids are so in love with their video games that they'll rebel if you take them away. But don't think of it as taking their video games away. Think of it as giving them something better to do.

Here's another story. We are lucky enough to have a family cabin up in the Maine woods and our cousins from Texas came up recently with their six-year-old daughter. The first thing out of her mouth when she walked in the door? "Where's my iPod?"

I wanted to say, "Hey kid: It's 80 degrees and sunny outside and there's a lake just waiting for you to jump in. Why on earth do you want to know where your iPod is?" But, instead, I said, "Hey kid: get your suit on! I bet you can't beat me out to the dock!"

Soon enough she was swimming and splashing like crazy, and running around the yard like it was the best thing she'd ever done. And during a week of fishing and canoeing and kicking the ball around, she never asked for the iPod again.

Did her parents give it back to her for the long car ride back to the airport? Yep. They sure did. Those car rides can be brutal. There's a time and place for all of the great things available to us today.

Our founders Glen and Jeff built their first house because they just couldn't stand watching their kids watch cartoons and play video games all day, so they decided to give their kids something better to do.

What's "active play"? It's giving your kids something better to do than sitting around and packing on the fat. It's that simple.