Posted on 02/17/2007 4:56:22 PM PST by saquin
Children who are cooped up indoors and prevented from playing freely suffer from "cabin fever" and are more likely to go off the rails, according to a Government adviser on children's play.
Parents and officials who believe their job is to eliminate risk from children's lives rob youngsters of the chance to develop vital skills and resilience, Tim Gill, the former director of Play England, will say this week at a seminar at the Royal Society for the Arts.
His comments come days after Bracebridge Heath Primary School, near Lincoln, was criticised for banning the game of tag at playtime because it was too boisterous, and Burnham Grammar School, in Buckinghamshire, clamped down on lunchtime kickabouts in case passers-by were hit by a football.
Headmasters have also been condemned for banning snowball fights and closing their schools in snowy weather because they feared pupils and staff might fall.
The impulse to be overly protective is having dire consequences for Britain's children, Mr Gill will say. "Children need their own space to make their own mistakes, deal with other children and push boundaries - the skills they once learnt playing in the streets or in the fields," he told The Sunday Telegraph. advertisement
"Now parents don't allow children to play out or walk to school and are scared to take their eyes of them in the park. Schools ban tag and conkers and are even banning running in the playground because of some misperception about the compensation culture.
"Not giving children space is disastrous. We are creating a kind of cabin fever. Some teenagers are out of control because they have never had these opportunities. Life is getting harder for children from all backgrounds. Some of the reason is the lack of opportunities to develop self-efficacy, the ability to self-regulate their behaviour."
Mr Gill, who led a Government-commissioned review of children's play, said teams working with young offenders reported that many had spent their lives watching television or hanging round estates and had never played outside.
"They've never been to the beach or to the park. Their opportunities to learn right from wrong, without adult intervention, to develop their everyday morality, have been severely curtailed. They have not learnt how to react if someone is making a fool of them or what to do if someone is challenging them. So much of those interactions you have to work out for yourself. Because they haven't learnt these skills when they were younger, by the time some children are teenagers they escalate situations and get their retaliation in first."
Officialdom was adding to over-protection. "Bureau-cracy and paperwork mean people are forced to complete long checklists that are more about covering people's backs than making things safer," he said.
Similar concerns have been expressed by Digby Jones, the Government's skills envoy and former director-general of CBI, and Prince Philip. Even the health and safety industry has attacked organisations that use it as an excuse to ban everyday activities. Lisa Fowlie, the president of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health, said: "To ban football on the grounds of safety will deprive kids of the opportunity to let off steam and benefit from exercise. Football has been a playground sport for generations. Banning it is a gross over-reaction."
My sister keeps her kids on a leash that's far too short in my opinion. Now that the oldest has gone to college she's running rampant and becoming a liberal vegan.
Why are the kids on rails, anyway? /sarcasm
Sorry to hear that. Hopefully, the drug haze will wear off sooner or later, and she'll come back around. Worked for me.
To the sociologists who contributed to this article: I'll let my child run free out of doors in the neighborhood in exchange for the courts and jails keeping the pedophiles and rapists INDOORS in the jail. How about that? THEN you can talk to me about how they are 'running rampant.'
Children given too much freedom at an early stage run the danger of becomiing obstinate liberals.
The article is right on. We all played outside a lot, no matter what season, and walked to school, rode bikes a lot, played golf, swam, all sorts of exercise away from school.
They failed to factor in negative societal influences such as bad music, violent films and tv, ugly makeup and clothes, peer pressure to engage in negative behaviors, epidemic shoplifting, drugs, violence.
I hear you about the perverts. There were some when I was young, but nowhere to the degree there are now, and I think they locked them up or worse for a long time back then.
>>To the sociologists who contributed to this article: I'll let my child run free out of doors in the neighborhood in exchange for the courts and jails keeping the pedophiles and rapists INDOORS in the jail. How about that? THEN you can talk to me about how they are 'running rampant.'<<
THAT'S A BIG AMEN!!!!!!!!!
When I was in elementary school, the principal's office faced the playground.
When snowball fights were permitted, he would put up a green flag in the window. When conditions were too icy for safe snowballing, the red flag would go up.
EEEGAADS I have been blinded by a brilliant flash of the obvious.
My wife and I have this "conversation" once in awhile. Just the other day I was telling a story about when I was in 4th grade at the store with my friend and we got in trouble.... My wife said "you were alone?" Then we got into the discussion of how when I was a kid we'd ride our bikes all over the place, etc. (The store was at least 3 miles from the house).
On the one hand I wish my kids had more freedom to just head out with friends, and yes, probably get into trouble a bit. But, traffic is bad around here, plus the dangers of perverts. (2 blocks away a few weeks ago some van tried to get a 13 year old girl to climb in).
I did bring up the fact in front of my kids that there are lots of organized activities that they do (drama, soccer, swimming, etc.) that I was not able to have - which is not such a bad thing either.
I wonder if there really is a higher proportion of perverts now than in the past. The perception is certainly there, but how much of it is because we constantly hear such stories in the media?
"My great grandmother told me about a child rapist/murderer running loose in northern Michigan when she was a youngster."
My mom tells the story of when she was a child ('20's) she and her sisters were walking home from grade school and taking the short-cut past the gravel pit. Some guy "flashed" them and they ran home and told the cops.
The cops went out to the pit and found a teenage girl raped and killed in the gravel pit. My mom/sisters gave a description of a car that they had seen nearby and the cops were able to track it down. My mom/sisters went down to the station to identify him from the line up - just like in the movies my mom said.
God, that's beautiful. I had a sixth grade teacher with a massive pingpong paddle thing named Smackswell. Any tomfoolery resulted in two hands on the front desk and a couple sharp swats. Everybody seemed to enjoy the spectacle. This was something like 1976. Imagine if that was done today.
That was in 1972. Pedophiles were just as real then as they are now. Had he caught me I have no doubt as to what would have happened. It was luck and speed and knowledge of my surroundings that saved me. Who would have thought to look for a pedophile in a church?
My great grandmother's experience would have been pre depression era but she did say that there were a lot of dangerous people drifting during the depression. Her parents took in a few boarders but her father gave "the speech" about causing trouble. Apparently it was made very clear that troublemakers could find themselves in serious trouble that no locals would help them out of.
Sounds like my mom. She was very generous as well, always willing to give me something to cry about.
I have wondered that myself. Based on changes in information and communication technologies since I was a kid in late 50s, there probably was a lot more than we knew about. But I also think it is worse now.
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