Posted on 08/14/2008 5:12:28 PM PDT by InvisibleChurch
All the safety measures we have taken to protect our children have produced such harmful effects as increasing the rate of childhood obesity; in fact, one in six children in America is obese, and many of them face a lifetime of chronic illness, says the Center for Disease Control. However, the situation could cure itself if children would just get off the sofa!
But how do we lure children outside? One key attraction is risk, says Philip Howard, chairman of Common Good. Risk is fun, he continues, at least the moderate risks that were common in prior generations. Today, America has stripped all the fun out of playtime:
There is nothing left in playgrounds that would attract the interest of a child over the age of four. Exercise in schools is carefully programmed, when it exists at all. Some schools have even banned tag and running at recess! Little Leagues forbid sliding into base, some towns ban sledding and high diving boards are history. Safety is important, says Howard, but do the resulting trade-offs, such as the increase in childhood obesity, make sense? There is one solution, he adds, someone on behalf of society should be authorized to make these choices, and the courts must honor those decisions. Otherwise, the pious accusation of safety fanatics will guarantee a cultural spiral downwards toward the lowest common denominator.
For America's children, that means spending more than six hours per day staring at a screen, Howard concludes. Is that the way we want our children to grow up?
Source: Philip K. Howard, "Why Safe Kids Are Becoming Fat Kids," Wall Street Journal, August 13, 2008.
For text:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121858701285435131.html
For more on Health Issues:
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=16
My SIL put her oldest daughter in the local YMCA "camp" -- bcause it was cheaper than daycare, but they did the same things.
(I have played baseball in a cow field with cow PIES but never with COWS.)
I barely made the 100 yard swim (1 minute 45 seconds and I was sweating!) but I can swim underwater until folks start looking for me, and I'll tread water as long as you like (Fred Lanoue, the GA Tech swim coach and author of Drownproofing, taught my mom swimming - my grandfather was a big GA Tech man and personal friends with Fred).
I've never been a fast swimmer, more endurance. My daughter turned out to be a good sprint swimmer (she is a lanky creature with long long legs, like her daddy), my son is a fireplug like me and like me he's a distance swimmer.
I have both the Red Cross and the BSA Lifesaving certificates, and I can tell you that the BSA program makes the Red Cross look like a flippin' stroll in the park!
(very proud to have passed BSA at the advanced age of 50! took the course along with my daughter, who also passed!)
She LOVED it. Of course, you have to pick your camp carefully. This is a rustic-style camp for girls (there's a brother camp for the boys), which means lots of hiking, camping, swimming, horseback riding, etc. They go to bed dog tired and don't wake up til morning (except for the "potholers", who wake up at 7 am for a refreshing dip in the mountain-spring-fed lake . . . brrrrr! and the Iron Maidens, who run 3 miles before Pothole and then jump in to cool off.)
She made a lot of lasting friendships and if she has daughters I'm pretty sure they'll wind up there (I went to the same camp when I was a kid. It's been around since 1951, and the brother camp started in the 30s).
If a batted ball hit a cow on the fly, then it was a home run; if the ball landed under the cow, then it was a ground rule double. And thanks for bringing this up because it demonstrates the ability of children to make their own rules, solve problems, and adapt to the situation if given the oppurtunity to do so without parents getting in the way and hogging the show.
We too played cow pasture baseball without any parental intervention (except of the 'how in the (*&^$ did you get so DIRTY?????' variety).
Kids need the experience of planning, negotiation, and work to get fun.
Don’t forget the metal merry-go-rounds. Those were the best. The big kids would push the little kids. Great fun!!
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