The Inside Story: Remember When Kids Went Out to Play?

Newhouse News ^ | 4/1/2006 | Peggy O'Crowley

[little jeremiah]

Looks good.

I often think of my own childhood, growing up in the 50s, as though it's ten generations away. Although I did not have a happy childhood, there was happiness in it. I rode my bike all over the rural roads, walked through woods, spent time at ponds looking at frogs and dragonflies and finding wild nuts, tramping through neighbors' fields. I can't imagine being a kid now. I rarely watched TV, didn't like it. I played ball of various sorts, slid down hills in cardboard boxes, climbed trees.

[brytlea]

When we bought our house (it was an old house, even back in 1981 when we bought it) the kids were little and there was no fence. We were on a corner, and altho it wasn't really busy traffic at the time, the first thing we did was put up a cedar fence (this was in W. TX and they are really common out there).
There was a cinderblock fence on one side that belonged to the neighbors. So, the kids were corralled and could play and whatever (it was a pretty big backyard as it was maybe a lot and a half). Sometimes they complained, because they wanted to sit inside and watch TV and then later Atari, but the survived, and now, they talk about their childhood as if it were paradise! ;)
susie

[Petronski]

The first day of Spring here, with snow still on the ground, the kids came boiling out of their houses . . .

I like your use of language here. Very nice.

[Smokin' Joe]

I live in a small town, by most standards, and our neighborhood is much the same as you describe. We all look out for the kids, and they keep riding their bicycles even after the snow flies.

They (the kids) are the catalyst that has helped make a collection of houses and families into a neighborhood.

[M0sby]

"They (the kids) are the catalyst that has helped make a collection of houses and families into a neighborhood."

THAT IS THE BEST LINE EVER!!!

[TontoKowalski]

I can certainly understand parents who are concerned about all the freaks out there. We're lucky to live in a neighborhood with like-minded people who collectively keep an eye on the kids. Still, too many of the kids want to spend their time indoors on video games.

Our solution has been Scouting. The boy just transitioned to Boy Scouts. What a fantastic organization! I wish more parents would get their boys into Scouting. Overnight outdoor activities once a month, lots of hikes and outdoor community service, and a weeklong summer camp packed with shotgun and rifle shooting, archery, lake swimming, and all sorts of other fun. Cheap, it's not. Worth it, it is.

I know that Scouting has had its own scandals with child-molesters in the past, but they've certainly faced that problem head on, taken real steps to protect the boys.

[Frank_2001]

Throwing rocks: Discharging a missile
Shooting slingshots: Weapons offense
Kick the can: May cause lacerations
Cowboys and Indians: Racism, White cultural hegemony
Teasing girls: Sexual harassment
Toy cars: May cause injury
Racing on the local dirt track: May cause injury
Trick-or-treating: Wrong on so many levels

Notice a pattern here?;)))

[xrp]

With fewer open spaces, paranoid parents and enough electronic gadgets to keep them cloistered for months, kids are less and less likely to have unsupervised, outside fun.

As such, they don't learn self-reliance.

[Clemenza]

Hablo espanol no hay problema conmigo. ;-)

When I lived in a 99% immigrant (mostly Colombian, with a few other Latin immigrant groups) community in Miami, the kids would play outside and ride their bikes around the community, but would be in by sundown. No gangs in my area (thank the creator), despite the fact that everyday in Miami, you are told by the media that if you go outside, you will be assaulted by gang bangers. Then again, I lived in a self-contained apartment complex with a police station next door.

[Physicist]

self-ping

[uncitizen]

These days it's hard to find children riding bikes

Poor kids these days don't even know what it feels like to have your bike stolen.

[Calpernia]

Si, hablo espanol. No esta la problema.

These are illegals. We have gangs and the drug network.

These aren't sweet little children roaming the street. These are teens and adults prowling.

[tiki]

My granddaughter stayed 6 weeks with her maternal grandmother last summer and came back looking like the Pillsbury dough boy. She was rarely allowed to leave the house. I had her 10 days before she went home and she lost the pudgy look from days outdoors and plenty of activity.

[Clemenza]

Correct. I know the type of which you speak. Your kids will have quite an, uh, "education" if they venture to the park.

[Iluvpopcrn]

And guess which memory she'll keep all year long? Good for you, Grandma!

[Calpernia]

Heck with the kids! I've had quite an 'education' and I'm an adult!

[miss marmelstein]

I live near a very working class, almost poor neighborhood in NJ - the children play in the street and the sand lots.

I recently visited the working class neighborhood of Echo Park in Los Angeles - children running in the street, and playing on their front lawns.

My conclusion? This is primarily a middle to upple middle class problem.

[Question_Assumptions]

A few years ago, I was sitting in my family room in the late morning on a weekend when the power went out. Within five minutes, I suddenly heard children outside playing. It was like the scene from teh Simpsons when the parents stop their children from watching television and, as if emerging from a cave, they wander outside rubbing their eyes and suddenly the sounds of children playing could be heard. I watched a lot of television as a child and did a lot of indoor playing as a child but also spend a lot of time outside with other kids, playing unsupervised or loosely supervised.

[Question_Assumptions]

When my father was a child, the neighbors did more than speak up when a kid did something bad. As my father describes it, the adult would grab them and start spanking them, dragging them home, where their mother or father would start spanking them, without asking questions, because they had done something to warrant having another adult spank them and drag them home. While I think there was certainly room for abuse the way my father grew up, I think we've gone too far in the other direction with parent's automatically taking the side of their child against other adults.

[VOA]

bump