Free Republic

Experts fear today's empty playgrounds http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070709/A_NEWS/707090322 http://tinyurl.com/3d4fpu By Jennifer Torres July 09, 2007 Record Staff Writer Heat on Friday nudged outdoor playtime earlier and cut it shorter than scheduled for nearly 70 children at Stockton's Seifert Community Center day camp. Once it got going, though, campers cheered on teammates during a running, jumping, twirling relay race, while other groups played basketball or made up their own games on playground equipment. Some outdoor play - any outdoor play - is important, recreation leader Michaiah Martin said. "Keeping them inside compresses a lot of the negative energies." According to environmentalists, child-development specialists...

How children lost the right to roam in four generations http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=462091 http://tinyurl.com/yt6geg By DAVID DERBYSHIRE Last updated at 01:03am on 15th June 2007 When George Thomas was eight he walked everywhere. It was 1926 and his parents were unable to afford the fare for a tram, let alone the cost of a bike and he regularly walked six miles to his favourite fishing haunt without adult supervision. Fast forward to 2007 and Mr Thomas's eight-year-old great-grandson Edward enjoys none of that freedom. He is driven the few minutes to school, is taken by car to a safe place to ride...

Go outside and playhttp://www.cleveland.com/living/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/living/1158309564312510.xml&coll=2 http://tinyurl.com/pg6bd That's the advice nature educators have for increasingly reined-in kids and their very protective parents Friday, September 15, 2006 Susan Glaser Plain Dealer Reporter When Steve Cadwell was a kid, he had the North Chagrin Reservation in his back yard, and he used to disappear for hours. "My mom said, 'Go outside, and don't come back until the streetlights are on,' " said Cadwell, 47, now executive director of the Nature Center of Shaker Lakes. Rare is the mother who issues that directive these days. Thanks to everything from fears about stranger danger to video...

One day a few years ago, Khady Lusby's twins were 5 and playing by themselves in the park that abuts their Arlington house when another mother called her at home. "She said, 'Do you know your boys are at the playground playing?' And I said, 'Yes, I know,' " recalled Lusby, who is from Senegal. "She said, 'Oh, you know this is not the way we do things here,' meaning in America. I just made a joke: 'Well, I'm African -- wherever I go I take my African way,' and she said, 'Well you can be reported.' " Undaunted, Lusby...

A disconnect at camphttp://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1154728213922&call_pageid=970599119419 http://tinyurl.com/mb4ox Kids are OK with new no-cellphone rules, but not so for some of their parents Aug. 5, 2006. 01:00 AM FRANCINE KOPUN FEATURE WRITER Ali Goodwill, 14, spends three hours a night on her cellphone. "I usually have to gossip with my best friends, and I just talk with random people for another hour. ... I love my cellphone so much. ... It's my baby." So you would think there would have been tears, tantrums, perhaps a smuggling incident, when the Grade 9 student was asked to hand over the phone at the gates of...

Dangerous occasionshttp://www.theage.com.au/news/books/dangerous-occasions/2006/08/03/1154198267699.html http://tinyurl.com/oaq6r August 6, 2006 The Iggulden brothers' instructions make short work of children's fears. By Frances Atkinson. It's a miracle the Iggulden brothers survived their very "dangerous" childhood. First Conn fell through the garage roof, then he made his little brother, Hal, jump off it. Moments before take-off, Conn told him, "If you yell out, 'Fly like an eagle,' when you jump - it won't hurt." "It was a lie, of course," says Conn talking from his London home. "But it did teach him about fear and a bit about not trusting his older brother quite so much."...