I recently got into an argument with a friend-of-a-friend a couple of weeks ago because she announced to our barbecue group that she was going to leash her child when her infant daughter was old enough to walk. The mom had received a baby backpack as a gift from very adoring and paranoid family. You know, the backpack leash? Yeah... that. Anyway, this new mother was adamant that it was a good idea, especially in "today's world". After a civil but heated short discussion, I felt without having my own child to use as an example, there was no use arguing with a woman who lives with that kind of fear. I was angry inside. But I let it go. Or at least I tried. But then I realized, I couldn't.
I'm all about kids running around, experimenting, and getting hurt and learning from it. Maybe, a reality check or a small dose of survival of the fittest? Enough coddling. Enough of this arrested development, already. We all need a little trauma to help us grow as people! Since my debate with the leash-advocate, I've asked nearly all my friends with spawn if they let their kids play outside, alone or with friends in a yard or on the streets. All of my peers said, yes. Which admittedly, made me feel better.
I grew up in Arlington, Virginia with a forest as my back yard. I spent a lot of time with my neighbors and siblings running through the woods and digging waterfalls on the hills. We endlessly explored the creek that ran behind our yard and rode our bikes around town like the posse in E.T. We learned to play outdoors and got into some good clean fun/trouble. Along with the one hour of Physical Education and one hour of recess I received at school, my parents expected us kids to go outside and play from the minute we arrived home, up until dinner time. That's about six hours of physical exercise daily before we sat down to eat (you can now stop wondering why kids today are overweight/obese). And we did all this exploring and dreaming before we even started our homework.
I recently discovered an amazing camp/school called the Tinkering School after it was profiled in a NY Times piece about hands-on design. My good pal, Mike Kuniavsky, a professional/big kid tinkerer, is quoted in the article.
The Tinkering School was started by Gever Tulley, a Senior Computer Scientist at Adobe, his wife Julie Spiegler, the XD Playground Monitor at Adobe, and their friend, Robyn Orr. Gerver wanted to create "a summer camp that encourages kids to play with fire, throw spears and take risks."
The Tinkering School offers an exploratory curriculum designed to help kids - ages 7 to 17 - learn how to build things. By providing a collaborative environment in which to explore basic and advanced building techniques and principles, we strive to create a school where we all learn by fooling around. All activities are hands-on, supervised, and at least partly improvisational.Grand schemes, wild ideas, crazy notions, and intuitive leaps of imagination are, of course, encouraged and fertilized.
More and more of my friends bring their next gen kids to our annual parties and I can only hope that some day I'll have my own little troublemaker to send outside to play and then eventually to this camp. The Tinkering School sounds refreshing in a world where too many kids' lives are governed by fear. We know free range chickens are healthier than their caged counterparts. So why not encourage free range kids too? Please don't rob your children of the important early independence and exploratory phase of their lives. Having grown up in an environment built on trust and "dangerous" play, I can vouch that it's made me a more exciting adult! Also, I bet it's probably more fun for everyone to let the children explore, play, and grow as a little thinkers/tinkerers!
"This Leash Demeans Us Both" - Simpsons: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i08XDDOI9wI
Posted by: kk | 2008.08.22 at 11:26 AM
Holy balls you were cute!
Posted by: kim | 2008.08.25 at 11:34 PM