I wrote a piece on this topic about a year ago. Very often, while driving through my son's neighborhood, I'm struck by the fact that there are few if any kids out playing. It doesn't matter when I'm there. I don't really expect that there would be many kids out early in the morning but if I'm there mid to late afternoon, wouldn't it be reasonable to expect tons of kids out playing in yards and even the streets? Often not-except last week. While babysitting for my grandson, I actually saw about a dozen kids playing in a neighbor's yard. They ranged in age from about 8 to 12 or so. It was encouraging to see that families still value sending their kids out to play. Nothing structured-just ordinary, random play. I wrote before about how much kids miss by doing this so maybe it's making a comeback. Maybe one day my grandson will be one of them.
1 comment:
I definitely couldn't agree more! But I think what's happened is the adults have shown kids that they have all the ideas when it comes to filling up those long hours that fill up the day. If you learn to turn to the adult instead of one another...then you don't really know what to do on your own. Adults come up with all these contrived 'activities' and stuff...which on the surface, looks nice. No one argues, everyone shares, no hurt feelings. But man...it was all those scrappy fights that made us who we are, right? How DO we get that back?
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