What did you do as a child?
I played outside all summer, every summer. Well out into the fall. Every winter day I could. At the very first signs of spring.
When I was a kid, my back yard was a blank canvas and I could create anything I wanted. I could play on the swings or ride my bicycle or shoot hoops or toss a frisbee. Or do them all. As a matter of fact, on good days, we were not allowed to play in the house. Eat breakfast-make your bed-go outside til lunch. Eat lunch-do a small chore-and go back outside until dinner. Eat dinner-and back outside til dark. Come in smelling like the summer air, covered in dirt and sweat and mosquito bites. Take a bath, go to bed and sleep, windows open, sound of little pond frogs singing their summer song.
It was fantastic, for I was never more free than this. Running around the yard chasing lightening bugs as the sun dipped below the horizon. Braiding little clovers into flower bracelets. Riding my bicycle for HOURS. Playing frisbee with the dog. The choice was mine, within reason, how I wanted to script my day. How empowering...
I just don't see children getting this opportunity these days, or truthfully, seeming all that interested in it. When I do see them outside, it is usually in group activities like soccer, and while that's fine, it just isn't the same. There are some legitimate reasons I suppose. It might be that I had more of a tolerance for it then, but it gets HOT out there in the summertime. (Was it always this hot?) I know that things like asthma are on the rise in children....and then there are safety concerns that come into play for most kids that didn't apply to me. I lived 2 miles back a dead end street where everyone KNEW and liked everyone else. A stranger was instantly recognizable and everybody looked after everybody else's kids. Safety just was a given.
Anyway, I wonder what our society has given up. We have traded unscripted freedom and imaginative active play for hours inside on an Xbox or Playstation. And we scratch our heads and question the childhood obesity epidemic.
We arm our elementary school children with cell phones and give them Facebook at ten. There are even padded swimsuits available for seven year olds at Abercrombie and Fitch, you know, because a seven year old girl needs the message reinforced that her body isn't perfect just like it is.
There seems to be an increasing push to make children into small adults. We eat our young, reinforcing in them early and often that if they don't act a certain way, look a certain way and have certain material possessions then they are no one. Popularity is defined by how old you were when you got your first iPhone and what gaming systems you have and little emphasis is placed on character, committment, or accepting yourself just as you are.
What do we teach our children about grace and compassion and empathy? Just this past week in Louisville, KY, a 2nd grade boy was found unconcious hanging on the back of a school bathroom door and no one knows why. Allegedly, 5th graders did it. How many times do we read about bullying or cyber-bulling? How many of our young girls are pressured into sexting? WHEN DO WE STOP EATING OUR YOUNG?
We water our education system down and do what we can to discourage our children to NOT think for themselves, question the status quo, or use their own imagination to solve a problem or arise to a challenge. Numb them with reality TV and Nintendo DS. Saddle them and generations after them with financial debts they can't pay. Poison their environment. Do we really love our children? Really?
Truthfully, it frightens me, what our society has become. Where are the militants on this one? Why are we not fighting harder for our children and grandchildren? Is this the best we can do? Do we want the reality we are creating for them?
And if we don't, what are we doing about it?
I, for one, intend to take any grandchildren I might one day have out to catch lightening bugs on a summer's night...and put them to bed someplace where the frogs in the pond can sing them a lullaby to put them to sleep.
I share your fears for our society. We see demonstrated daily the extremes of parenting, but it seems little in the way of sane, middle of the road approaches. Parents are either so wrapped up in their own world that their child is left completely to their own devices and the potential for a complete generation to be lost to sloth, as opposed to the parents that are doing their best to make up for the inadequacies they endured as a child that their child becomes micromanaged to the point of ineptitude on the part of the both the child and the parent.
ReplyDeleteThe question becomes though, will we see the reversal of these trends in our lifetime and will it be enough to bring sanity as a people and in the treatment of children who indeed are the future?