There’s a stream that runs along one side of my yard. It’s technically on my neighbor’s property, but it’s really a no man’s zone of neglect. It goes between our properties into more swampy neglected property. Coyotes, deers, rats and one stray cat use the stream as a highway to greener spots. The stray cat knows that he will find a small plate of tunafish on my back step on very cold days.
Steve and I often talk about this little patch of wilderness on our suburban block. It’s more of annoyance for us now. Heavy rains cause the stream to jump its banks and flood our side yard. But, we often say, the younger versions of ourselves would have loved that stream and the surrounding trees and rocks. A parent-free zone to create castles. We would have been out there all day building forts and dams and paths. Steve’s younger self would have had firecrackers, too.
Our kids have never explored it. We have never seen neighborhood kids out there or at the river at the end of the block. What’s wrong with them?
Hanna Rosin writes that exaggerated fears of abductions has created over-protected kids, who have lost the skills of fort building and adventure. And she’s right to a certain extent. I know many people who won’t let their children play in the front lawn without supervision.
But there’s more than that going on. We certainly encourage our oldest kid to play outside. Actually, encourage is a mild word. We have been known to physically eject him from the house on a nice day. “Go outside and don’t come back!” Yes, we’re that kind of parent. After a distressingly short period of time, he’ll sneak back in the house through the garage door. There’s no one to play with, because all his friends are skyping or hanging out virtually through the XBox.
Kids aren’t playing outside and exploring, because they hang out in the virtual world. Also, because they participate in so many organized sports and activities. Between travel soccer and homework and Minecraft, there is no time to explore and build forts.
Are we too nostalgic for the past? Maybe the fort-building isn’t happening by a stream, but it is happening on Minecraft instead. Maybe we were out exploring, because we were simply bored. I’m not sure. But I’m praying for a warm weekend, so I can start playing outside again. Steve and I will be outside gardening and setting up the back patio and the boys will be inside killing aliens.
Apt. 11d 
My son keeps asking for a dog. I don’t really want to deal with a dog (because they live way too long), but I’m thinking of giving in because it would keep him outside more. Maybe dogs are something that require both parents to agree on and I shouldn’t just bring one home.
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About two months ago I announced to Mr. Scantee, “We’re getting a dog!” prior to starting the search for a dog so while I didn’t bring one home as a surprise it was pretty much a unilateral decision. He knew there was nothing he could say because he had recently denied me my dream of moving to a warmer place and so he couldn’t deny me this as well. He of course loves the dog now that it’s here although I do do almost all of its caretaking. I’m pretty pro-dog so my vote is for you to just get one. Get an older one if you’re worried about it living too long.
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I kind of did the same thing. I really looked and looked for the right one, then threw a hail Mary and came up super lucky because my dog is the best dog. Seriously. She has one key trait that is very important to me: she really doesn’t bark. I’ll never find another dog like her. My husband was ambivalent to the dog, and then when we’d had her for 2 months I broke my ankle and couldn’t walk her, so he and my daughter did, and now he loooooooooves this dog. He used to wake up in the morning, roll over, and cuddle me, but now he cuddles her instead.
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Maybe dogs are something that require both parents to agree on and I shouldn’t just bring one home.
you’ll never get a dog with that attitude.
I do think that unstructured play time outside is good for kids, but that it’s harder if there’s not a group of kids. There is a little woods near my house where I often walk. It’s got houses on all sides of it, and people walk dogs there a lot. It’s completely safe. But, even in the summer, it’s really rare to see kids playing there alone, even though there are lots of kids in the neighborhood. I would have loved it. I don’t understand it, really.
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I am just paranoid enough that what came to mind was Jack’s story over at An Inch of Gray: http://aninchofgray.blogspot.ca/2011/10/bridge-one-terrible-night.html <– warning, Kleenex.
That said, we live a few houses down from a large-ish park that is attached to bluffs down to a great lake, and said park also connects up to a ravine. My 8 year old sometimes is allowed to go with his friend over to the park when the friend's parents are in their backyard 'cause they can see/hear some of the park from there. They'll spend an hour or so.
I'm thinking of getting him a good set of walkie talkies so he can roam a bit further but I can buzz him. I do worry about him going over the bluffs (they are a falling hazard, not hikable) but at his age I had full roaming abilities for the whole neighbourhood. But he and his friend are about it for kids outside, unless parents are along, and it does worry me. There are the natural hazards, and then enough ravine and woodland that if there were a nefarious stranger it would be a pretty easy spot to groom and abduct. Even if that's statistically super unlikely.
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“Maybe the fort-building isn’t happening by a stream, but it is happening on Minecraft instead.”
The virtual world really isn’t a replacement for the real world. Engineers joke about it (an example the spoof article on what cars would be like if they were like software: http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/joke/crash.htm).
We try hard to keep screen time down in our house, but are also thwarted by the lack of kids outside (working parents, kids in after school activities, including ours). In the last year, though, a critical mass of boys have developed on the street, and we have had a few of those idyllic summer moments in which kids come knocking on the door and then wander off to play games of their own creation. We do not have woods and creeks to explore, and I am probably the most sensitive to having the kids wander too far away, though I try to inhibit myself from being too protective. It’s the cars that freak me out the most — we grew up on dead end streets, and though our streets aren’t busy, they are on an urban grid, and people do drive to fast for kids to be fancy free in the streets.
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Th Rosin article, and its description of the “adventure playground”, and, especially that people thought they were needed in 1945 London, to expand children’s experiences, is fascinating.
I really worry about how the constant “watching” and supervision and controlled activities are influencing child development. Hopefully, the changes are one of those cases where, fundamentally, you can’t change human nature, and the children do find the right kinds of development opportunities even while we enclose their worlds so much.
I do worry that some activities (TV, screen time, video games) are mapping into instantaneous reward circuits in a way that does actually alter development, though.
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My husband just installed our hammock in the backyard of our house. I think that’s going to be a draw.
I’m also planning on putting a water table back there for the 1-year-old.
There’s a loss in the death of childhood adventuring, but there’s also a gain in terms of physical and emotional safety. The accidental death rate for American kids is way down, and there are fewer opportunities for older children to pressure younger children into stupid, dangerous activities or to molest them.
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A raccoon took a crap in our water table. Or an unusually constipated cat.
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Sure it wasn’t an opossum?
I suppose that means that one with a cover is a good idea.
Speaking of vermin and water, I was talking to a mom at school recently who’d had to deal with a plague of rats in her swimming pool.
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You want the neighbour’s house to be the raccoon latrine, not yours.
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I googled for images of the types of feces. I still think it was raccoon. There’s certainly possum back there, but the raccoons are more active and larger.
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I think it’s got to be a neighborhood thing. We’re lucky enough to live in a neighborhood of parents who kick their kids out of the house. There’s always someone knocking on our door (our boys are 9 and 11)- only when we haven’t sent our kids somewhere else to knock on their door. No play date arranging needed. We often joke that we have NO idea where our kids are, and there’s always someone texting around trying to locate a child. Since they all play outside so much, they have these elaborate games (really just variations on the tried and true games, with their own rules tacked on) that they engage in when outside – sometimes they even voluntarily quit video games. BUT, this would NOT be possible if it weren’t for the other kids. Our boys can play outside together – for about 5 minutes before someone comes in bitching and moaning about how his brother is an asshole. We just lucked out in to this – perhaps it’s because we live in the modest part of a wealth area, so none of us can afford to over schedule our kids. I never would have thought to look for it in a neighborhood – I’m not even sure you can.
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We are lucky enough to live in a neighborhood where kids still roam free and play pick-up ball games in the corner park. But I agree that there is definitely more parent supervision of kids outside these days.
The irony, to me, is that I simultaneously observe very little on-line supervision. I’d wager that many parents have no idea what aps are on their kid’s smart phone or what they are posting to them. Sure, the kids are safe inside. But do we really want them snap-chatting selfies for hours at a time?
I’d argue we need less outside supervision and more smartphone supervision.
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Shannon’s got it — it’s a critical mass thing. I’m a block from a decent size park, and two blocks from a huge park, and there just aren’t unsupervised kids playing out there — if there are kids, they’re with their parents. When I send my two outside, they’ve got each other to play with, which involves hostility and crankiness. If you could coordinate a whole neighborhood to act like Shannon’s, the kids would draw each other outside.
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There’s a family doing a faculty in residence thing that obviously does the free range kid stuff with their bigger kids (probably 8/9 and 6/7). It’s more or less OK when the big sister is out and about, but last night, the little boy was out by himself on the quad just sitting and looking very forlorn, particularly when my kids were about to leave. (My kids are just big enough that any interaction on their part was a charitable effort, rather than a source of actual enjoyment to them.) It bothered me enough that I knocked on the door and told the mom that he looked like he’d had enough outside. That was about 6PM.
Of course, after I knocked, he was on his bicycle again.
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It bothered me enough that I knocked on the door and told the mom that he looked like he’d had enough outside.
I think that officially makes you a busy-body.
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We don’t allow screen time during the week (tv or iPhones or iPads or computers) and none during playdates either. Playdates are for playing, not sitting side by side staring at a screen.
There are many social skills and negotiating skills that are learned through actual playing with other kids. Taking turns, deciding upon which activity when, resolving conflicts. And the imagination required to dream up something.
I can’t tell you how many kids come over and are shocked that they actually are meant to play together and not watch a movie or play a video game during a playdate. Luckily the girl’s best friend is of the same mind.
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Yep.
Because when you see a 6-year-old child alone, with no adult in sight, sitting there looking sad at 6PM in the evening in a college quad, the thing to is to just keep on walking by.
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Agree with comments about the neighborhood… My kids are always playing in the stream by our house, because the entire neighborhood of children is playing by the stream. We also have a basketball net in the driveway, and a badminton net in the backyard, nearby woods with trails, and a playground that they kids can walk to. The kids are outside a lot. We don’t allow screen time during the week at all, and limit it to 3 hours on the weekend. One of my kids is very Minecraft-obsessed. I’m sure it’s all she would do if she had any more access.
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Limiting screens is all about teaching self control and moderation. And not only to our kids, eh? We have to follow the same “rules” too to make it fair.
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It’s been interesting hearing the take of Anjali, Kristen, and Shannon who seem to still have the neighborhood pack that some of us (we had it as kids, even though we were outsiders (by race, ethnicity, religion, culture) in our suburban neighborhoods). I think some of whether the kid adventure/outdoor culture exists is random (is there a critical mass of like-minded and like-aged kids with sufficiently available parents in close vicinity (across the street, next door, a few houses down makes a difference).
But, it would be interesting to know the non-random factors, too, like the style of the neighborhood (as I said, our neighborhood is on an urban grid, which makes it less safe, car-wise than the suburban neighborhood I grew up in), the size of the town, the likelihood of stay-at-hone parents in the neighborhood (mine is not high, at least partly because it is near a university with a lot of dual career couples, who live here).
I also think J is of an age where the hanging out outside stopped anyway (though maybe for some it did switch to hanging out in the basement,).
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I think that the non-random factors include having similarly aged kids in the same block or within a few blocks plus smaller lots sizes. There seems to be a correlation between size of lot and foot traffic. When we lived in a ‘hood with 50′ + lots, everyone went from car to garage to house and back. And that’s with a subway stop within a ten minute walk. 33’ lots and there’s much more hanging out outside (different city but still a subway 10 minutes away and both had large parks nearby).
When we moved back to Vancouver a few years ago we consciously chose the ‘hood with those factors in mind – families with similar demographics, close to a large park, smaller lots/houses, walking distance to a retail strip. All provide enough motivation for people to be out and about.
Our “good luck” was to pick a block that has a history of families/kids playing road hockey, basketball and biking in the joint lane behind our houses. The kids even played kick the can last summer (I know, I was pleasantly surprised too!).
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Another Vancouver-specific issue is that a lot of newcomers aren’t keen on nature.
Some of my relatives sold a large ranch house on a big lot in the Vancouver suburbs (probably no more than 3,000 sq. ft.). It was sold to a family that bulldozed the house, and covered the lot with 10,000 square feet of house.
Once you do that, there’s practically no yard left to play in.
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Mine’s a suburban grid, cul-de-sac. The neighbourhood is still primarily retirees who bought in the 60s when the subdivision was new, but it is rolling over to more families with kids gradually. We have a cultural divide among the younger families; about 1/2 wasp-ish, 1/4 south-east asian, 1/4 middle eastern muslim, and other first generation families. The hijab/burqua wearing families don’t interact much, even the kids.
What mostly torpedoes kids being out are commute times/afterschool care and activity overload. There’s this one family that has a similar approach to us.
I am thinking of creating a “Sat evening hangout” or something at our local park, and put out the word that our kids will be there when it’s not raining and drop by and play and see if that works as a bigger kickstarter.
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That’s a great idea! And yes, the after school activities make it enough of a challenge to schedule playdates let alone free play amongst neighbor kids.
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As I said, our boy participated in a group of kids for the first time on our street this summer. I had at least one summer evening where I was able to call out the door into the dusk for him to come back for dinner which was a pleasant delight.
We’ve been living on the same street for a while, so these are changes that made the summer different.
1) a baseball team, little league, in which my son got to know the boy across the street. We’ve lived across the street for a number of years, but the kids are in after care during the school year, and, until recently, the year or so age gap between the kids seemed bigger. Playing on the team together jump-started their relationship 2) a swim club that both we and the family across the street were able to join for the first time last summer (very long waiting list). This gave them opportunities to interact, but also meant the other family hired a nanny and had the kids out of full day camps. 3) a little guy across the street who is very outgoing and not at all shy (so, he’s willing to come knock on the door no matter how many times you say you can’t play). 4) the kids being the right age for this kind of play — independent, but not yet encumbered by other responsibilities. 5) limits on screen time. 6) good weather (we get this in the summer).
So neighborhood communal activities were important to us — particularly ’cause we are not particularly good at initiating conversations/relationships with strangers.
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Yeah, we have the pack of kids roaming freely thing here, too — dead end street, houses fairly close together and enough parents who work at home or have summers off that there is loose supervision. We did already have one incident, w/ a boy who was pressuring my daughter into lifting her dress during hide and seek, which was obviously unacceptable. Dealing with it was uncomfortable, for sure, but it gave me a lot of faith: the 6 parents of the 5 kids involved talked to all the kids as a group, and the problem stopped. (We later joked that this is practice for when they’ll be up to no good as teenagers.)
And as soon as the @$#%^! snow melts and the sidewalks are clear, my 2nd grader will be walking to school by herself. She’ll see tons of folks we know along the way — it’s only three blocks — and it makes me just a little nervous, which seems to indicate that it’s the right thing to do.
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In our neighborhood, just about everyone works full time (I’m the exception), so most of this play happens after 6 PM and on weekends. But thankfully, it still does happen. Because I’m way too lazy a parent to seek this kind of thing out for my kids myself.
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I agree a critical mass of kids can change things radically. In the summers, we visit family, and a whole scrum of kids develop naturally. They play the sorts of games kids have always played.
However, I also think it’s important to grow up in sync with your generation. Kids should know what Minecraft is. They should be conversant with internet/texting/app etiquette. Not the etiquette the adults try to impose, but the etiquette their age-peers have developed.
Teens are hanging out online. That is changing them–but teens who do not have the opportunity to hang out are not developing peer-relevant social skills.
For example, does your child Snapchat? In the last few months, it seems my little petri dish of teens moved from Facebook to Snapchat (not Instagram.) Just like the neighborhood, if you’re stuck on Facebook, suddenly there’s not a critical mass of kids to interact with. They’re all on Snapchat. Hanging out with the adults and advertisers on Facebook is like being the kid who doesn’t leave the grownups behind in the house when all the other kids run off to play hide-and-seek in the dark.
Next year, they’ll be somewhere else.
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Agree with this – it’s that balance between living your family’s values and making sure that they are in step with their peers. My daughter’s 8 so much of this is about teaching moderation in all things as well as self control. That middle ground.
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My oldest recently made a couple of Minecraft creepers out of marzipan (dyed green with chocolate jimmies for the face). She did one for herself and then took one to school for a Minecraft-crazed buddy. It was generally admired.
Around the time she made the first creeper, I had the brilliant idea of doing a playdate with a family with two kids the same age as my two oldest (11/12 and 9ish), with the planned activity being marzipan dying and molding. (A garlic press produces an interesting effect.) It was great fun and my oldest was able to run the whole thing with very little help. The other mom and I mainly just drank coffee and chatted.
Over the last year or so we’ve done a number of cooking playdates with the kids (I think apple dumplings and pretzels work particularly well as a group activity–I would make the pretzel dough up in advance, of course). My oldest has gotten fairly handy around the kitchen, so I can just hand off the hosting to her. (It does leave a huge mess, of course–we haven’t reached the age of reliable kitchen cleanup, whatever that is–35?)
Anyway, I like the idea of having some sort of activity planned for big kids (ideally with input from them).
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I forgot that the original marzipan Minecraft creeper was made to be a cake topper.
C also sewed a stuffed Minecraft creeper in green fleece with her sewing machine (it was based on a pattern from Instructables).
http://www.instructables.com/id/Minecraft-Stuffed-Creeper-Doll/
It is possible for the virtual world to be inspiration for real world crafts and hands-on activities.
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Love this – a perfect extension of an interest into other arty expressions.
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Thought you mind find Hannah Rosin’s new piece on adventure playgrounds interesting:
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone/358631/
At one point, she quotes some urban, NYC friends of her who go through the math and figure out that the longest they have EVER left their ten year old unsupervised is fifteen minutes. I keep mulling that over — and wondering what sort of psychic harm that does to a child . . .
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