Posted on 04/18/2006 12:26:32 PM PDT by Squawk 8888
Olympian Silken Laumann says the solution to childhood obesity is simple: play
As evidence of how far off track modern childhood has strayed, a new book on the importance of play offers detailed instructions for such classic children's games as tag, hopscotch, hide-and-seek and capture-the-flag.
"The schoolyard games have been lost. Kids don't know how to play four-square, a lot of people don't know how to play hopscotch," says Silken Laumann, who over the next couple of weeks will be conducting sessions across the country instructing parents on the rules of the games most of them played as children.
The former Olympian, whose book Child's Play is being released today, says many of these games are being lost in the hectic scramble of over-protective, hyper-scheduled, time-crunched parenting.
"We've got our children wrapped in bubble wrap and when you're in bubble wrap, you can't play very much. You don't get hurt, but you don't really have fun either," she said in an interview.
"It's a very interesting comment on what's been happening the last few years that we have to teach people how to play capture-the-flag again."
Ms. Laumann, a four-time Olympic rower, says she began thinking about the importance of play when her children, ages six and eight, often couldn't find anyone else out playing in her Victoria, B.C., neighbourhood.
A year ago, she launched weekly capture-the-flag nights in her neighbourhood park, and was astounded at the transformation that took hold of parents and children.
"At first, the parents were reluctant to jump right in. They looked a bit awkward. They asked for the rules several times -- it was as if they didn't feel qualified," she says. "By the second or third time, someone else was getting it going.... They all started having so much fun."
Capture-the-flag -- a team version of tag played with flags that must be captured by opposing teams -- happens to be the game Ms. Laumann loved the most from her childhood, and much of her book and her advocacy work is driven by a nostalgic lament for a childhood lost.
"Kids used to live outside," she writes in her book. "Adventure was a central part of most days, found in the form of a scavenger hunt down a path near home, a trip to the neighbourhood Mac's Milk, a meeting of friends on the first snowy day to sneak our
toboggans onto the exhilaratingly steep slopes ...
"The streets my children and I walk resemble the ones I grew up on -- snug houses, big old trees and tons of space for adventure -- but there is one critical difference: The streets today are silent."
While today's parents fret about rising obesity levels among Canadian children and bemoan the loss of the uninterrupted stretches of unstructured play that marked their own childhoods, they are also to blame.
Time for tag, for hide-and-seek and the like have been forfeited to fears about children's safety and an increasingly competitive parenting environment that insists on giving children the kind of "head start" that begins music lessons at the age of three, soccer and hockey leagues at four, and an intense academic regime in primary school.
Ms. Laumann says today's parents labour over every decision they make about their children, and want only the best for them, yet are still leaving them shortchanged.
"People say the world has changed: Our streets aren't safe, kids can't go outside alone and parents don't have the time to watch their kids play in a neighbourhood park.... We are denying children the best and most vital part of childhood: Play," she writes in her book. "Play is the lifeblood of childhood -- it brings children joy, it nurtures and excites their creativity, it builds social skills and it strengthens their bodies. Play is the very best part of being a kid. I can't accept that something so good for their hearts and minds and bodies, something so good for us as parents, has been lost."
She says schools are also to blame, by drastically reducing the time children spend being active indoors and outside, by succumbing to lawsuit fears and tearing out playgrounds or restricting schoolyard activities.
"I think it's time we start challenging what's happening in our schools and the time that our kids are inactive," Ms. Laumann says. "When kids are physical there will be injuries -- I would rather have my child sprain their wrist but know how to climb a tree. I'd rather they break their arm than get Type 2 diabetes [from inactivity and being overweight]."
She says she wrote this book because so much of the talk about the problems of childhood inactivity, rising obesity levels and declining health seems to focus on complex, large-scale solutions such as altering how foods are taxed or restricting fast food companies, when there is a quicker fix at hand.
"We all grew up playing. We all grew up healthy. We've done healthy children before -- previous generations of parents have created healthy children," she says. "We have the answer within ourselves.... It's about reclaiming our children's childhood and giving them time to play."
--un-invent TV--
I don't know if they play less today but I know I played like a maniac, ate like a horse, and ate all the wrong stuff as much as I could get of it and was always skinny.
I guess it depends where you live. In my city neighborhood in St. Paul, the kids are outside whenever the sun is shining. They're riding bicycles madly up and down the street (sidewalks for the little tykes). Every driveway that has kids has a basketball hoop.
Kids run up and down the street, dashing into each other's houses to grab some Koolaid or some cookies, then slamming the doors on the way back outside.
Hopscotch? You bet, and there aren't any parents out teaching the kids how to play it. I saw a group of 8-year-olds or so crouched down on a patch of dirt playing marbles this weekend.
In the Summer, the little lake about three blocks from my house is jammed with kids, fishing, paddling around in small boats, etc. The park has a big jungle gym, and the kids are climbing all over it.
You rarely see an adult supervising these kids, who are of three races and several nationalities.
It looks just like my neighborhood back in the 1950s. Exactly like it.
Keep in mind that this is a city neighborhood. Out in the suburbs, you won't see a kid anywhere on the streets in Minnesota. It's odd that suburban parents are all scared to death that their kids will get hurt or snatched or something, while the people living in the neighborhoods in the city don't seem to be all that worried.
You should see it here.
Tempting, but I grew up in the TV age (in the early 1970s we had cable) but the park was always full and in the summer there was always a pickup game of hide & seek or Brit bulldog; in winter the hill down the street was covered by toboggans. I think a big reason this is no longer so is parental paranoia; the streets are still pretty safe but there is far more awareness of the risks now. IMNSHO the health fallout from locking up the kiddies is a far greater risk than what happens in the average neighbourhood.
Pretty much the same here. In the "old city" here in Toronto there's lots going on but the 'burbs are deadsville.
I've noticed that, around here at least, parents won't let their children out of the sight of an adult. They drive them everywhere, and I never see the kids outside unless a parent is there with them. I think they fear that a predator is behind every bush. With the way society's changed, for all I know they're right.
In Civil Air Patrol last week after normal PT, we played Ultimate Frisbee. The kids had a great time, and I was sore for three days. Definitely more energy expended than on our mile run.
shes absolutely right! kids need time outdoors playing
with each other. think of all the other benefits beyond
fresh air and sunshine they are getting out there...
kids learn to solve problems, to be good sports, to be
good leaders and followers and the endless stream of
creativity in those little imaginations amazes me daily.
our kids must spend time outdoors with their friends every
single day and no t.v. or video games til long after dark
... and homework and chores are done too of course :)
I'm an old man and I have no idea what four-square is, and I don't know how to play hopscotch on account of the fact that I'm a guy.
How about stickball and football? Manhunt rocks too.
"I think they fear that a predator is behind every bush. With the way society's changed, for all I know they're right.
"
No, they're not right.
I know! We could force kids to play these in school and then have professional four square and hopscotch leagues with multi-million dollar contracts and then the kids would have a reason to play them.
Wouldn't that be fun?
And just wait until these sterile little robots get to college : no smoking, alcohol free fraternities, no parties, no night visits from the opposite sex, blah, blah, blah. They were already starting this crap as I was graduating. And we wonder why junior does nothing but eat cheetos and play video games and lives at home until age 50.
My parents bought us bicycles and roller skates, but that was about it on equipment. Of course, there wasn't much TV then (late 50s/early 60s), and Mom didn't let us watch during the day anyway. No computers, of course, or walkmans or playstations or video games. We had Tinkertoys, and pails and shovels, and model horses, and bats and balls. And books. Lots of books. We were all voracious readers. Cherry Ames, Spin and Marty, Trixie Belden--I could never get enough. We were card players, too. Go Fish and Old Maid and War when we were little, then Spades and Cribbage and Bridge (for me, the others didn't like it) when we got older.
What fun! Kids these days don't know what they're missing.
Don't forget "Smear the Queer", "Red Light, Green Light" & "Red Rover".
My favorite was Flashlight Tag. We lived on a cul-de-sac and as soon as it got dark, all the kids came out to play flashlight tag. It was fun to hide in the dark. Instead of having to chas ethe persn in the dark, the person who was "it" used the flashight to "tag" you.
Gym class has been going downhill since they outawed dodgeball. We loved that game...and we always aimed for the head! Then when we got home, we played "kill the man with the ball" --- a combination of rugby and wrestling. Today I see kids at the local elementary school huddled around Gameboys. Then they go home to play XBox.
"My favorite was Flashlight Tag. We lived on a cul-de-sac and as soon as it got dark, all the kids came out to play flashlight tag. "
I have an 8-year-old nephew. I do not believe he has ever been outside at night. A few fireflies showed up one night when he and his parents were visiting my house (we don't see many here in MN), and I said, "Let's go catch fireflies."
The kid wasn't interested. So I got my mason jar and went out and caught them myself, along with all the neighbor kids. My nephew wouldn't even look at them. Stupid kid. And even stupider parents.
I LOVED catching Fire Flies!!!
We would keep them in our room as a night light.
Gotta remember to poke holes in that lid though.
My brother used to catch them & rub them onto the pavement for glow-in-the-dark messages. Kinda sick but funny.
We'd also catch tadpoles in the creek & run through the sewers.
"Gotta remember to poke holes in that lid though.
"
Yes...very important.
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