Preadolescent Panopticon

From Greg Knauss. So ace.

Read the whole thing, as Greg regales his epic account of high-flying junior high hijinxes, waterlogged Playboys (“News flash: Boys like boobs.”), and a crazy robot attendance monitor gone awry. In it all is an important lesson for parents: learn to let your kids go. “Open the cells! Take off the chains! Set them free!”

The goal is not to prevent them from making mistakes, but to allow them to. Risk assessment, trust development, value determination, responsibility, self-direction — all of these very important skills grow out of the opportunity to explore, to experiment, to make mistakes and correct them. Short circuit their opportunity to screw up and you’ve destroyed a chance for them to learn something new, about themselves and about how the machine works.

Feb 15, 2010 :: Tagged under: free range kids, parenting :: #

'Hyper Parents & Coddled Kids'

A documentary for you Canadians, premiering tonight on CBC Television. (And hey, it has Carl Honoré in it.)

(And here’s another take on the doc.)

Feb 04, 2010 :: Tagged under: free range kids, parenting, sociology of children :: #

Banning "50 Dangerous Things" from Victoria, Australia?

That’s (roughly) what one Australian child psychologist wants to do to Gever Tulley’s new book, citing that it was a “massive over-reaction” to cotton-wool parenting.

Huh.

Not to particularly dwell on the controversy around books like “50 Dangerous Things” and “Free-Range Kids,” but if I were a kid and/or parent and saw that either book was being prevented from being sold in the area, I’d launch a counter-smuggling operation and sell the books out of my garage if I had to. Nothing vindicates a book quite like others wanting to ban it.

Feb 02, 2010 :: Tagged under: free range kids, gever tulley :: #

Dangerous Things (Parents Should Let Their Kids Do)

This is why I absolutely love Gever Tulley – he says things like this:

“Driving a car is an empowering act for a young child. It gives them a handle on the world in a way that they don’t often have access to.”

And how true that is. Everything we thought was bad or ‘dangerous’ for kids can be looked at in a positive light, like driving a car or climbing a tree. It’s all a matter of asking “Why shouldn’t a kid try this?” It’s about approaching childhood experiences positively instead of fearfully – recognising that whatever kids do, there’s often an underlying need there to do it, or some sort of unmet sense of fulfilment that comes from it. For instance, why shouldn’t kids throw rocks? As Tulley says, “Children need to practice throwing things because it activates the frontal and parietal lobes of the brain, which help with visual acuity, 3-D understanding, reasoning and structural problem-solving.” It makes sense to kids, but adults have talked them out of it. We need to let them kids experience these ‘dangerous’ things again – we need to see that there’s something behind them, something meaningful that’s worth exploring.

And that, my friends, is what I love about Gever.

If you haven’t seen Gever’s TED Talks before, you certainly owe it to yourself. He succinctly captures so much about the needs of childhood and the origins of creativity. This interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, where he chats about his new book, is pretty great too.

Jan 14, 2010 :: Tagged under: creativity, free range kids, gever tulley :: #

Would You Track Your Kid By GPS?

Annnnd… there it is. Geekdad is the one to ask the question. And, really oddly – for the otherwise really cool Geekdad – they’re actually serious when they ask the question, only stopping to consider the costs and potential privacy/“technology falling into the wrong hands” issues. Yet nobody’s asking whether there is a privacy issue for the kid himself? Whatever happened to parents putting a little bit of trust in their kids? Whatever happened to letting our kids be Free Range?

Thankfully, there’s the best comment in the world following the post:

“If I had a teenager, I’d be the proudest dad in the world if my kids figured out how to defeat the device.” – cv0098

UPDATE: Okay, the new best-comment-in-the-world now actually comes from a teenager himself. Here’s what “starwing123” had to say about things:

As a teenager, I must be completely opposed to this idea. Even when I was 9 or 8, I don’t think this would have been necessary. It completely violates a child’s rights. Children and teens get annoyed when our parents call us a lot, let alone track us. If you really can’t trust your kid or neighborhood that much, you really should move or do a better job parenting. […] The best part of childhood is the exhilaration that comes when a parents is not around and you feel free. It also forces children into thinking they cannot fend for themselves. That they cannot take care of themselves. Is that what you want your child to feel like?

Amen to that.

Jan 11, 2010 :: Tagged under: free range kids, geekdad, technology :: #

Four Observations on the 'Bad Parenting' Movement

Speaking of, Jeremy Adam Smith recently shared four observations in response to the increasing social discussion and media coverage of what’s been labeled the “Bad Parenting” trend – a sentiment perhaps encapsulated best in author Ayelet Waldman’s new book, “Bad Mother”.

Smith’s first observation on the matter is, I’m beginning to think, the biggest elephant in the room:

Fathers are pretty much defined as “bad parents,” as the term is being popularly used. When we talk about proud “bad parents,” most of the time we’re really talking about “bad mothers” who are rebelling against the idea that they must be perfect to be good. […] Waldman’s “Bad Mother” is a reaction against the unrealistic, cognitively dissonant standards to which mothers are held. Meanwhile, fathers are not held, and do not hold themselves, to the same standards. When fathers reveal their foibles and failures as parents, they do it, by and large, with a laugh. They are allowed to be human.

I think Scott Hick’s upcoming movie “The Boys Are Back” (featuring actor Clive Owen) is a great example of this: the implicit assumption in the film’s reality, and what motivates the story’s drama, is this notion that “Dads Can’t Raise Kids Alone.” Through the course of the film, though, Clive Owen’s character must expectedly prove, against all odds, that it can be done – that the boys are, indeed, back and the world is still going to be alright with that.

Movies like this, and books like Waldman’s “Bad Mother”, Michael Chabon’s “Manhood for Amateurs”, Jeremy Adam Smith’s “The Daddy Shift”, and, to an extent, Lenore Skenazy’s “Free Range Kids” all seem to grasp at what might be considered a social splintering of gender expectations and family roles. The West – and America – has traditionally always had a very rigid, simplified structure concerning gender and family roles – and now we’re beginning to see this structure opened up and diversified.

Naturally as with any social change in values and beliefs, this splintering has generated controversy, public hesitation, and drama along the way. But I think it’s important to realise that change isn’t always necessarily a bad thing.

Nov 30, 2009 :: Tagged under: bad parents, daddy shift, free range kids, michael chabon, sociology of family :: #

"The Hidden Playground"

Four or five months ago now a game called “The Hidden Park” came out as an app for the iPhone platform, and it offered a rather unique experience. By using the device’s built-in GPS and camera, players could visit real world places and “augment” those places with virtual creatures that they could interact with digitally.

This trend of “Augmented reality” really provides an interesting shift in how people are now seeing “gaming.” For most parents and concerned adults before, gaming was a “playing actively outdoors” versus “sitting in front of the screen indoors” thing; but now, we’re seeing that the two don’t have to be so diametrically opposite.

The ever-excellent doctoral candidate and blogger Sara Grimes has an essay about this new form of play over at The Escapist Magazine:

Drawing on trends established in alternate reality games, this new crop of outdoor gaming titles incorporate real-world exploration into gameplay through the use of GPS and wireless communication. Buildings, park benches and cul-de-sacs become the secret hiding places of fantastical creatures and treasures. As such, they provide kids with shared tools for re-defining their relationships with urban and suburban landscapes.

Imagine this emerging genre as the digital equivalent of a “seeing stone.” The seeing stone shows up in a number of modern fairytales, including Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black’s The Spiderwick Chronicles and Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. A primitively carved totem, its key feature is the eye-sized hole in its center. By looking through this hole, the children in these stories are able to see aspects of the world that are usually invisible to humans: magic, fairies, portals to other dimensions, ghosts and goblins and even other people’s souls. The idea that the world around us is much more magical than it seems has clear links with childhood traditions of outdoor play and make-believe….

hat is promising about these seeing stone games is the way in which they open up space for those more imaginative and autonomous forms of play. By breaking down existing definitions of what an urban or suburban landscape is, how it should be experienced and what kids are expected to do there, games like The Hidden Park put forth a direct challenge to the idea that public space is inappropriate and dangerous for kids. Once this space is opened up, so is the play potential. That’s really all that outdoor play and the wilderness of childhood have ever needed to thrive.

It does just boggle the mind with possibilities, doesn’t it? Makes me excited to see what childhood will be like ten, fifteen years from now.

Nov 23, 2009 :: Tagged under: augmented reality, free range kids, imagination, video games :: #

Spike's Free-Range Movie Set

I really do promise, no more “Where the Wild Things Are”-related posts after this. In a recent interview, though, Spike Jonze shared about an aspect of the movie’s filming I hadn’t heard before – and quite frankly, love to pieces:

Q: Even though it was a long and hard shoot, did the process bring out the inner kid in you?

Spike Jonze: I don’t know… did it? The inner kid was what the script came out of, but I don’t know. We all moved to Australia together and everyone brought their families.

Basically, the philosophy was: if there are lots of kids around, they can go anywhere. They can go in any of the trucks – go make something in the art department truck, or go put the wolf suits on, or get fake blood from the makeup trailer, or go into one of the sets and make a movie. The idea was like summer camp – this is your set.

But also, [it was for] Max and all the kids on the set to have this group to play with and hang out with. The idea was [that] the set was open for the kids to come whenever they want. Max was there every day with some other photo doubles that played Max in the movie. So there [were] always at least four or five kids, and then on a good day there were probably 15 kids, when everyone’s kids would come.

How cool is that? And to think that you can actually be true and honest to the feelings driving a story throughout the whole filmmaking process… in this case, letting everybody behind the camera go just a little wild too.

Nov 01, 2009 :: Tagged under: free range kids, spike jonze, where the wild things are :: #

"As Goes Halloween, So Goes Childhood"

Well this is it. Tonight is the night – the eve of tricks or treats, costume delights, and Linus van Pelt’s Great Pumpkin. Halloween has been a call for festive celebration for hundreds of years, but many are worried about a different sort of fear – the not-so-helpful kind – that’s co-opted the holiday and turned it into a gutless, no-room-for-frights, coddling, and above all, “safe” event.

Lenore Skenazy writes an implored defense in support of the real Halloween for the Huffington Post – arguing that, “as goes Halloween, so goes Childhood.”

In England last year a man was ordered by his landlord to take down his lawn decorations because the zombies were too “realistic.”

In other words: They looked too much like…real zombies?

Our fears are so overblown they’d be laughable if they didn’t sound so much like the fears that are haunting us the rest of the year. Fears that have lead to parents to wait with their kids at the school bus stop, and keep them inside on sunny afternoons. Fears that make parents forbid their kids from skipping down the street to invite a friend out to play. That’s the everyday version of Halloween fear: The fear that we cannot trust our children amongst our neighbors for one single second because, who knows, they might be pedophiles just waiting to pounce.

If you want to see what childhood is becoming, look how at what Halloween has already become: A parent-planned, climate-controlled, child-coddled, corporate-sponsored “event,” where kids are considered too delicate to even survive the sight of a scary costume. You know. Like if someone came dressed as a slightly torn Snickers.

Oct 31, 2009 :: Tagged under: childhood, culture of fear, free range kids, halloween :: #

Banning Adults, Take Two

The BBC expands on the “banning parents from playgrounds” story with a bit more depth and (well, let’s face it) level-headed reporting:

Ms Thornhill (the elected mayor of Watford) said of the two adventure playgrounds where the parents had been asked to leave: “This is not a playground we’re talking about but a unique gated and fenced facility where quite risky and challenging activities take place.”

She said the Harebreaks playground had never allowed adults to stay and the Harwood site had had a core of half a dozen parents who insisted on staying with their children.

It had distracted staff from adequately supervising the children leading to a series of incidents, Ms Thornhill said.

I think we really have to be quite hesitant to make values-based judgments about anything before putting ourselves in the shoes of those making the decisions. It seems like the senior playworker involved really, truly felt the culture of the Adventure Playground, and the opportunities there for children to play freely, would be better served if parents were asked not to stick around.

Anybody who’s worked with groups of children, I suspect – either in child care or education, at an Adventure Playground, or in special groups or clubs – can at least sympathise with the feeling. I’m sure the playwork staff and the Council feel it would be lovely to have a welcoming place for all – kids and their parents, and hell, anybody else who is a part of the community – but especially in these financially constraining times, it takes far too much time and energy from an already over-taxed staff to concentrate both on kids and parents. When push comes to shove, it’s the kids who win out – and rightfully so, I should think.

UPDATE: Dorothy Thornhill has posted several responses to the widely misconstrued incident on her blog, and it seems this really is a bad case of the misunderstandings:

What has happened is that at Harwoods a handful of parents have been staying on, not just dropping their kids off. After a number of incidents, staff that run the facility felt that the presence of these parents was hampering their ability to supervise the kids properly – who remember are engaging in risky play and do need to be given full attention. They’ve now brought the site in line with Harebreaks, where parents don’t stay on and they have no problems.

Oct 30, 2009 :: Tagged under: adventure playgrounds, free range kids, kids environments :: #

Should Teenagers Be Allowed to Sail Around the World Alone?

A look earlier this week by CNN at the world of teenage sailors, including a look at the journeys of Zac and Abbey Sunderland, Mike Perham, and Jessica Watson.

A comment from Jessica’s father, though, I think best captures the real gravity of what’s at stake:

“It would be devastating if we lost her, but I still think it would be worse to say ‘no you can’t go’ because of that risk, because of what she’s put into it.”

– Robert Watson

This isn’t about perceived risks or dangers, but about whether to believe in dreams – to believe in the greater, unconquerable spirit of humanity.

Oct 30, 2009 :: Tagged under: free range kids, laura dekker, sailing, teenagers :: #

Dutch Court Rules Against Laura Dekker's Sailing Odyssey

By Daniel Bigler :: Friday October 30, 2009

The final verdict is in: A Dutch court has decided to bar 14-year-old Laura Dekker case from setting sail around the world solo.

“Concerns for her safety are so grave that they constitute a serious threat to her interests should she set sail now,” the presiding judge ruled in the Utrecht district court in the central Netherlands.

“Laura Dekker is hereby placed under the care of child care services until July 1 2010.”

She’ll be forced to remain where she is for now, at least until the end of the school year in eight months when the court’s order expires.

Laura, at least, seems to be taking the decision fairly well:

“It’s probably the most prudent if I just finish this school year” which ends in May, she said, citing the arrival of winter weather and a need for preparations before she departs on her 26-foot (8-meter) boat named “Guppy.”

As for me, I’m thinking up a whole host of cuss words to call the Dutch courts. That the need for adventure, risk and exploration doesn’t register in their minds as having an equal weight along with psychological and emotional well-being is, I think, a disheartening tragedy.

Children need to take risks, explore their unknown, and experience adventure in order to live fully.

Tagged under: adventure, free range kids, laura dekker, risk, sailing :: #

Banning Adults from Playgrounds?

By Daniel Bigler :: Friday October 30, 2009

Lenore Skenazy at Free Range Kids caught hold of recent piece in the Telegraph describing how a local London borough is taking steps to “ban” parents and adults from public playgrounds in their area.

Councillors in Watford claim they are only following Government guidelines and cannot allow adults to walk around playgrounds “unchecked” … Council Mayor Dorothy Thornhill argued they are merely enforcing government policy at the play areas, in Vicarage Road and Leggatts Way.

She said: “Sadly, in today’s climate, you can’t have adults walking around unchecked in a children’s playground and the adventure playground is not a meeting place for adults.

It sounds pretty outrageous at first glance – but there have been a few things that have thankfully been cleared up along the way.

First, there’s this fact: Watford’s two “public playgrounds,” in question – Harwoods and Harebreaks Adventure Playground – aren’t in fact public to begin with. They’re Local Authority-run and technically fall under the bill of “offered youth services” – not that dissimilar from public schools, after-school programs, clubs, and so forth. Most or all of those places, mind, typically don’t encourage adults to stick around for very long either – since many parents do actually tend to get in the way of the program itself, generally.

Second, I’m not sure what to say about the Telegraph’s reporting: it’s all over the map in how it’s portraying these places. A few things: Adventure Playgrounds aren’t your normal playgrounds. They are set aside, time-honoured spaces for kids to build and be in charge of their own play – “a child’s world in the city,” if you will. Some of their hallmarks are:

• They’re dynamic, fluid spaces – often filled with children’s fort- and den-building, mud and sand pits, ponds or other natural places, and built wooden structures like gangways, towers, and so forth (historically solely built by the children, but anymore primarily built by the adults who are guided by the kids) – and their ultimate control lies in the hands of the kids themselves;
• Children are given ample permission and encouragement within Adventure Playgrounds to take measured risks, build competence, and test their own abilities within a safe environment that they have ownership of;
• A staff of trained, experienced “Playworkers” is always close at hand – understanding, reflexive adults there for the children if needed, who provide for and maintain children’s play in different ways, but otherwise are very hands-off in their approach. Unlike how the article describes playworkers, they’re not “Play Rangers” and they don’t “patrol”; the title of “Play Ranger” does exist, but typically in more commercialised play spaces that may be “adventurous,” but really shouldn’t be considered “Adventure Playgrounds.” (And yes, play workers do know their title is oxymoronic – and often they’d prefer there was no need for their job; that said, there’s sometimes no way around providing at least minimal adult supervision in places like these.)

Adventure Playgrounds can really only be understood by spending time in one (a real one) and reading up on the history and philosophy of Adventure Playgrounds. They have quite a legacy in many European countries, and are seen to fulfil a vital need in densely populated urban centres, where children don’t often have the space – or the social allowances – to play freely. Again, to really understand how they operate and what they provide to kids you just have to experience one; if you don’t have one near you, though, Morgan Leichter-Saxby’s playwork blog is a good place to start to get a better idea.

Like a few of the commenters from Skenazy’s post, I have to admit: the kid in me rejoiced a little at first hearing the Watford story. The adults have been banned! The adults have been banned!

Even though some parents are crying foul and accusing the borough of being a nanny state – well, logically there’s not that much difference to kids between nanny states and nanny parents. Both are a bit of a nuisance when you’re trying to play.

I think more pressingly, this is not about whether parents are allowed to visit their playground – but about an underlying issue of Openness in children’s play environments.

Adventure Playgrounds generally try to run based on a philosophy of openness: Children should be free to choose what they like to do. They should be allowed to play however they like, and with whomever they like. And, perhaps most crucially to the concept: Children should also feel an openness to come and go as they please, to use the space as much or as little as they want. Open-access was a founding principle of the Adventure Playground. The idea was to turn the space into a neighbourhood-based resource for children in the broader context of their lives, functioning at their full disposal and not as a mere attraction for their parents to drop them off at on special occasions. No, they were to be places children can come to with friends, say, after school, hang out at however long they like, and leave from whenever they wish. They were to be children’s places, fully theirs and no one else’s.

This belief in openness may often mean pragmatic difficulties for Adventure Playground staff, depending on where their financing is coming from. Many Adventure Playgrounds are run independently as separate charities, but others are run by Local Authorities and governments, typically with their own agendas in place. The person who foots the bill is the one who gets to decide what kinds of information the playwork staff collect about children: For instance, do children need to be registered, with parental contact information? Do they need to be signed in every time they visit, or just once? Are they allowed to sign in themselves, or do their parents need to do it for them each time? There’s a lot of questions involved, and unfortunately this is where the ideals behind Adventure Playgrounds come into conflict with the realities of arranging for their funding and the actual practice of running them.

Still, I think it might be too easy for us to get caught up in our adult worries in considering play provision: We get trapped in a paranoia about pedophiles, or a constant questioning of safety, or the feeling that we need to have more accountability. Sure, it was a misstep on the part of the Council to cite these concerns as reason for the “ban” – but I hardly think that’s the full picture, or even really the most important issue at stake here. Unfortunately for the Harwoods and Harebreak Adventure Playgrounds, the Local Authority officials in charge of them don’t seem to really understood this philosophy of Open-access: They’ve required that children are first registered to visit, for instance, and the general feeling I get is that parents are either required or encouraged to drop off and pick up their kids – but children aren’t free to come and go as they wish. There doesn’t seem to be much of a feeling of true Open-access for kids.

That they equally don’t extend access to parents is only a periphery concern to me; I think what we should really be worried about is the children’s level of Open-access to Adventure Playgrounds. It’s them, not the parents, who most importantly should feel the freedom to come and go as they wish, unhindered by both policy and their parents’ free range allowances. If we were truly focused on them and providing for their play, then maybe the topic of “banning” parents from playgrounds wouldn’t raise such a big stink.

UPDATE: Some quite needed follow-up, courtesy of the BBC’s far more level-headed reporting and some blog posts from the Council’s elected mayor, Dorothy Thornhill.

Tagged under: adventure playgrounds, free range kids, kids environments :: #

Venturing Into the Land of the Wild Things

NPR spends some time talking with author Dave Eggers, who co-wrote the film adaptation of “Where the Wild Things Are.” I think I’ve covered the film and its history pretty well, but saw this bit and had to include it.

Eggers tells Melissa Block that his attraction to the Wild Things project sprung from his love of the Maurice Sendak children’s book upon which the movie is based. He was particularly drawn to Sendak’s vision of free-form childhood:

“I spent most of my time growing up … in the woods making forts, breaking stuff and playing in the mud,” he says. “I think most kids, but boys especially, need to sometimes pick up a stick and hit other trees with it.”

Eggers contrasts that aspect of his youth with the depictions of childhood commonly seen in modern Hollywood movies: “You see a much more indoor version of childhood,” he says. “It’s safe and sanitary.”

There’s so much truth in that.

Oct 18, 2009 :: Tagged under: childhood, free range kids, kids environments, nature, naturedeficit :: #

Jacket Copy's Q&A with Michael Chabon

One of my favourite authors, and another person who I think gets children and childhood experiences so well: Michael Chabon.

The Los Angeles Times’ Jacket Copy blog has a pretty extensive interview with him, with the discussion moving swiftly between writing habits, fatherhood, children’s growing lack of unstructured play, and – my favourite part – children’s powers of subversion, even in the fact of corporate commodification of play. Chabon does improperly pluralize LEGO in his discussion, but we’ll forgive him that, since he is a really awfully good writer.

Oct 13, 2009 :: Tagged under: free range kids, michael chabon :: #

Stupid Playground Rules

You can’t make this stuff up:

“Always sit in the swing; don’t stand or kneel. Hold on tightly with both hands. Stop the swing completely before getting off.”

This is why adults should never, ever be in charge of playgrounds.

Sep 20, 2009 :: Tagged under: culture of fear, free range kids, kids environments, playgrounds :: #

Everyone Needs Adventure

By Daniel Bigler :: Wednesday September 2, 2009

For the past couple days, I’ve had quite a bit rolling around in my head that I’ve wanted to say about the recent ruling by the Dutch courts to (at least temporarily) not allow 13-year-old Laura Dekker to sail around the world on her own. Hers is an inspiring example that doesn’t come along often, and I’m left stunned that there’s such vehement opposition to her planned journey.

Then I found that earlier today Graham – writing at the We Love You So blog – said everything I could wish to say about the ruling, in a way that’s ten times better. So, I’ll leave you with that instead:

“Every child needs an adventure of some kind. The process of becoming an adult is predicated on exercises in independence, facing up to intimidating circumstances, and finding out what it means to be alone. Laura Dekker is simply ahead of the curve.”

– We Love You So

(Via David Anaxagoras.)

Tagged under: adventure, free range kids, kids, laura dekker, sailing :: #

Over-Prepared for Kindergarten

Jacqueline Stenson, writing for MSNBC:

Long gone are the days when parents signed their kids up for kindergarten based on whether their birthdays met the school’s cut-off, and youngsters simply showed up on the first day, where they played, snacked and napped. Perhaps they had attended preschool, but if they did, they almost certainly didn’t have any summer tutoring to make sure they really were ready for kindergarten.

Today, many children go to two or three years of preschool and some stay on for another year of pre-K. Like Rubesch, some parents have begun signing their kids up for summer classes or one-on-one tutoring to improve their reading, math, writing and overall “kindergarten readiness.”

There’s a lot of ground covered in Stenson’s article, from an examination of the more societal-based trends of academic acceleration and attempts at educational reforms, to parenting paradigms and the contemporary question many parents are asking, of “How much preparation is too much?” Most of the issues at hand are well addressed in the Alliance for Childhood’s report from earlier this year, “Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School.”

I’m glad to see this as part of MSNBC’s “back to school” coverage, though. It takes time, but slowly we can see that many more modern families are, if not finding the right answers, at least asking the right questions.

Aug 18, 2009 :: Tagged under: education, free range kids, kindergarten, play, sociology of children :: #

How the Suburbs Have Killed Children's Ability to Roam

John Michlig reflecting on Michael Chabon’s excellent essay from earlier this month about the Wilderness of Childhood:

How many of us can remember that sweet freedom of youth, when a bike was your ticket to independence? A warm summer day, and you just take off. I can still recall the terrific feeling I had at about age 12 when my range had widened to the point where I could get to Wausau News and Hobby and browse racks of paperbacks all by myself. As long as I was home by dinner, my time belonged to me.

Michlig’s right in saying that it’s this ability for children to roam freely that suffers the most from the American middle class’s Great Exodus to the suburbs. In the short time span of just a few generations, children’s freedom and independence in their very own neighborhood has nearly dissipated, as families (bolstered with the comforts of middle class wealth) head away from the city to find a house and lawn with a white picket fence all to their own.

This move toward the suburbs is often undertaken out of a desire to find an environment better suited to raising a family – but ironically, it’s the suburbs themselves that tend to be most detrimental to children and childhood. Urban centers and rural locations have their own problems to be sure, but they’re understated in comparison to the damage the “non-planning” of suburban neighborhoods has on children and their ability to roam. Not only do children lose out on the open air and greenness of the country, but their new suburb environments lack the diversity of the city. Lawn after lawn, white picket fence after white picket fence – the suburb’s nondescript offerings and lack of diversity offer little to children for them to stake out as their own, to take control of a “territory” solely theirs. There’s very little richness they can draw on anymore.

As one suburb-dwelling mother told the Daily Mail: “Over four generations our family is poles apart in terms of affluence. But I’m not sure our lives are any richer.”

Jul 29, 2009 :: Tagged under: free range kids, suburbs, urban planning :: #

Banning Bicycles as a Way to Get to School

Banning bicycles as a way for kids to get to school, for fear that they’ll increase the risk of a child getting hit by a car?

That’s what it looks like is happening in New Jersey. Leigh Ann Von Hagen, a planner at Rutgers University’s NJ Safe Routes to School Resource Center:

Banning bicycling to school is way too common throughout our state. We are in the planning stages of conducting a statewide survey to find out how often bicycling is banned. We are also developing a model policy for walking and bicycling to school. It is true that teenage driving is significantly more dangerous than students bicycling when you look at crash statistics. Yet, no schools consider banning teenage drivers.

Also, sadly, bicycles have also been banned by some school districts in other states in the US. Isn’t it obvious that the alternative – more cars, as parents dropping their kids off at school instead – is only going to involve more car accidents?

Not only does banning bicycling eliminate a safe route to school – but consider what bicycles offer children in terms of self-autonomy and developing their own independence. I think we’re losing out on more than a safe route to school here.

Jul 29, 2009 :: Tagged under: bicycling, education, free range kids :: #

Bubble Babies

Lenore Skenazy (the Free Range Kids mom), writing for Reader’s Digest about the always-lampoonable children’s safety product industry:

In the Kiddie-Safety Industrial Complex, parents are gobbling up hitherto unheard-of stuff like those Boogie Wipes tissues, toy wagons with seat belts, sure-grip gloves for lifting baby out of the bath, and even knee pads for babies to wear when they start to crawl over that crushed glass you chose instead of carpeting for the nursery.

Personally my favorite is the gLoves – “pint-sized, disposable gloves” that will “keep kids safe from germs in public places!” Never mind that you’re going to kill your kid’s immune system by this over-protection.

As Skenazy gently points out, “you don’t get hard science when you start buying baby safety products; you get hard fear.”

Jul 28, 2009 :: Tagged under: commodification of childhood, culture of fear, free range kids :: #

The Wonderfulness of Sidewalks

The town of Bangor, Maine, is awfully proud of their sidewalks. And for good reason.

Sarah Smiley, writing specially for the Bangor Daily News:

Last July, when I came to Bangor from Florida to search for a house, I commented again and again (until I’m sure our Realtor was sick of hearing it) about the way people here congregate on the sidewalks. My mom, who was with me, said it reminded her of neighborhoods from the 1950s, where you didn’t need a pass code to get into your friend’s gated community and calling the kids home for dinner was as easy as opening the front door and shouting their names.

Indeed, one year later, our boys enjoy the sidewalk in front of our house from morning until night. They run through multiple backyards, never meeting a blockade of privacy fences. I can think of 12 neighbors offhand whom I know well and who know my boys’ names and where to send them if they get into trouble. On most nights, after Dustin gets home from work, he and I stand in the yard and watch our boys ride their bikes up and down the sidewalk.

(Before I go on, I must say that the comments on this over at Free Range Kids are, as ever, deeply engaging.)

Sidewalks, kids roaming freely, lemonade stands, open lawns, and front porches... all of these things are often well loved and cherished, deeply rooted parts of our lives. It’s true, their importance is often only known fully in retrospect, but I think if you’ve ever experienced the kind of culture and sense of community that these they inspire, you have a glimpse already at their power. It’s an instance where very real, physical geography inspires culture, which in term impacts our very individual psychological well-being and happiness. Often, it’s this that is at the bedrock of real Community.

These experiences of Place, experiences rooted in our environment and how we use it, play a vital role in determining what our lives and social realities are like. The places and neighborhoods we live in, how we interact with – and let our children interact with – the physical spaces around us… this makes up who we are.

So for the children’s sake, move somewhere where there’s front yards and sidewalks where they can play.

Jul 23, 2009 :: Tagged under: free range kids, geography, sociology, sociology of children :: #

In Spain, It Takes a Village to Babysit

Jerome Socolovski, for NPR:

Summer in Spain can be hot and oppressive. But at night, city parks and village squares come alive with people of all ages. For an American visitor, one of the most striking differences is how unconcerned parents seem in public about their children. There seems to be an unwritten rule that anyone near a parent shares responsibility for that person’s children.

Now note the differences with North America. Collective sigh. And now let’s all go buy tickets to move to Western Europe.

Jul 21, 2009 :: Tagged under: free range kids, kids, parenting :: #

Kids Busted by Police for Having a Lemonade Stand

The horrible, horrible dangers to society of kids selling lemonade. (Horrible, I say!)

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

The call came in at 7:06 p.m. Juveniles, seven of them, on a quiet residential street, selling an uncontrolled substance: lemonade.

A neighbor had dimed them out, and a Haverford Township police officer responded in a hurry.

When he arrived at the two-story brick house on Maryland Avenue, he dutifully informed Dana Kleinschmidt, mother of four of the reputed offenders, who included 5-year-old triplets, that they were violating the law. They were selling lemonade without a permit.

Darn ruffians. They should know better than to take such entrepreneurial initiative and hope that their neighborhood would support them. Clearly, the kind neighbor who called them in was just hoping to guide them from their wicked, deviant ways.

Legality became an issue on July 10, when William Nickerson called to complain that neighborhood children were peddling the stuff. Nickerson said they were going house-to-house ringing doorbells, and he didn’t think they were being properly supervised by adults. “I’m not being Scrooge,” he said.

Everbody now: Nickerson rhymes with… [fill-in-the-blank]! And yes, Major Dickerson, you are a Scrooge. And you should surely expect your house to be TP’d come Halloween.

I’m seriously thinking about sending this guy a copy of James Vollbracht’s book, “Stopping at Every Lemonade Stand”. Maybe he’ll get the clue then.

(Oh, and I’m not nearly as incensed about this as Lenore Skenazy is. She’s downright funny when it comes to these things.)

Jul 20, 2009 :: Tagged under: free range kids, kids, socialproblems :: #

Should Adults Help Kids Play?

By Daniel Bigler :: Tuesday July 14, 2009

Mike Lanza, of Playborhood.com, recently raised a particularly good question: Should adults help children play?

It’s only been relatively recently in history that adults have become infatuated with children’s play – recognizing its inherent values and, well, the inevitability of it. Of course toy companies have known this for the better part of a century, and the early childhood education field has also recognized it for many decades. The mainstream culture has been a bit behind the curve – only really becoming fully comfortable with the idea of play as not only natural but useful in the past 10 or 15 years, I’d say – but now you could say it has become a de facto standard in America: Children deserve to play, and crucially, it’s adults’ responsibility to support and guide them in their play.

While history somewhat obviously bears out that children have always played, it was still only until the late 1800s and early 1900s – marked most distinctly by a 1930 White House conference, where it was declared that “Play is a Child’s Work” – that adults began attempting to capitalize and control children’s play. As Howard Chudacoff writes in his stellar book, “Children at Play: An American History” (you can read a condensed version of Chudacoff’s central premise in Greater Good Magazine), “The intention was clear: Play was integral to childhood, but because play, like work, needed to be productive, its content was an adult responsibility.”

Thus, we’ve noticed a paradox emerge in this past century: while adults now recognize that children’s unstructured, free play is a valuable pursuit, we’re also now more keen than ever to control it – to extract every ounce of worth from it. As with so many good things before, we’ve made play into an economic good – a commodity that should be utilized well to extract its greatest value.

Lanza points out how this has manifested itself now into an actual adult profession: The Playworker. (I will note that, at least generally, within their European Adventure Playground roots, playworkers have always been rather respectful of this paradox.) We also see this capitalizing streak being spread through the efforts of nonprofits like Playworks and KaBOOM!, into our schools’ play yards and recesses and into our communities’ playgrounds – efforts that, intentionally or not, place the power to play in the hands of adults, not kids.

So what can we do, to truly honor play by letting it be – but also making sure there’s room for it? By putting respectively it in the control of kids themselves, but unconditionally encouraged by adults?

This, I think, is the greater question.

Thankfully, I am rather pleased that children might have already kind of answered that question. As Chudacoff attests – and this was my favorite part of his book – children have an incredibly powerful ability to subvert the most well-conceived ideas and efforts by adults, at anything that ultimately belongs in their domain. We tell children to play on this nice, wonderful playground that we’ve provided; they naturally play in the streets – or (rather brilliantly) come up with new uses for said playground. We give them the utopian, docile world of Barney to sing along to; children naturally come up with the “I Hate You, You Hate Me” version of it. (That, and Soulja Boy. ‘Nuf said.) And so on – never underestimate children’s power to creatively undermine adult’s best efforts.

But, as Lanza recognizes – and I agree – America is not a typically play-friendly place for children. Despite all our best efforts at controlling and guiding play, we’ve engendered a culture that simply doesn’t allow for the real stuff.

I like how Lanza describes the cultural situation, and what role adults may have in changing it:

Most neighborhoods today have no culture of children’s play. They are wastelands. There are virtually no kids playing at all. When kids do play in neighborhoods, they play in small numbers, usually two (i.e. one-on-one play). While play in America’s neighborhoods is scarce, large group play is scarcer. Thus, there is no built-in mechanism for passing down play culture from older kids to younger kids.

We adults who are actively guiding young kids’ play activities are taking on that older kid role. Like older kids, we decide what to play, where to play, and with whom, and we adjudicate disputes.

However, our power over young kids is naturally more absolute than that of older kids, so we need to consciously “back off” when we’re guiding their play. Our goal should be to grow our little kids into big kids, the leaders of play in their neighborhoods. We should let them go beyond their comfort zone at times to prepare them for leadership, and we should be prepared to get totally out of the picture when the older kids are ready to be leaders.

I think he’s right: this is a cultural battle – and like it or not, no program or initiative is going to effectively change culture. We can’t buy our way out of this play deficit.

Rather simply, we just have to hand the keys over to kids themselves – helping provide spaces and places, materials and other things when we can, but ultimately simply recognizing that we can’t and won’t ever be in control of children’s play. When we tell ourselves that, it frees the culture up to be led and forged by the children themselves.

I heard a story once where a man who grew up in the 1960s asked his mother what they did that was so successful in parenting him and his siblings; she simply replied, “We did everything we could to put ourselves out of a job in 18 years.”

I think that’s what our task is now.

Tagged under: free range kids, kids, kids culture, kids environments, play, playborhood :: #

Life Lessons Through Tinkering

Speaking of the benefits of boredom, Merlin Silk recently reminded me of an old TED Talk that Gever Tulley gave a few years back. Tulley titled his talk “5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kid Do,” and it was about exactly that: Tulley shared experiences like building and tearing things apart, playing with fire and using pocket knives, and experimenting and tinkering – experiences that are crucial to children developing aptitude and their own self-competency.

Certainly not welcome things in our risk- and mistake-averse society – but Tulley’s message is made all the more compelling by the fact that he works with actual kids to build, make, deconstruct, and tinker during a week-long, not-your-usual summer camp he founded, called “The Tinkering School”. It’s a place, as he says, where “kids can pick up sticks and hammers and other dangerous objects, and be trusted. Trusted not to hurt themselves, and trusted not to hurt others.”

That there is no more convincing evidence in support of his message than the sight of actual kids in action – building, creating, experimenting – is I think the way it should be, and it’s something Tulley is able to share beautifully.

Now Tulley is back with another talk, discussing life lessons learned through tinkering. It’s another fine – and truly captivating – look at the creative processes of children, and the unimaginable possibilities that emerge when they’re given the time and permission to tinker.

I hope you enjoy it.

Jul 08, 2009 :: Tagged under: childhood experiences, creativity, favoritethings, free range kids, gever tulley, kids environments :: #

A Summer Without School or Camp

With the current economy, parents are finding they can’t pay for summer camp this year, just as school districts are finding they can’t pay for summer school.

This might be bad news for some parents, but it is definitely good news for free range kids everywhere.

While I had to laugh at how the New York Times tried to make summer school into a fun and nostalgia-inducing thing for kids – I tend to think most kids instead regard it as hell – they make a fair point in saying that a lack of summer school options tends to have a disproportionately worse effect on lower-income families. Many of these families perhaps live in less play-friendly or safe neighborhoods, in addition to having fewer resources and finances to spend on “constructive” outlets for the summer hours – and without summer school, these kids might just otherwise end up at home in front of the TV.

Still, not having summer school around – regardless of how important you portray its benefits – doesn’t necessarily have to mean kids’ summers are devoid of substance, no matter the kids’ socio-economic status.

As Parent Dish points out – in considering summer without another hallmark pastime, that of summer camp – there’s plenty of pluses to not doing anything:

Dr. Alvin Rosenfeld, psychiatrist and author of “The Overscheduled Child,” tells Newsweek. “Boredom is not necessarily our children’s enemy. It can stimulate [children] to think, create, and hear the soft murmurings of their inner voice, the one that makes them write this unusual story, draw that unique picture, or invent some new game.”

It really is all a matter of perspective. We don’t have to have our schools and camps direct every moment of summer for our kids “so they won’t get bored” – and we don’t even have to worry about making those three months out of school “productive.”

If we just turn off the TV, give kids a library card and a couple of bucks, and send ‘em off on their own with full permission to roam the neighborhood, good things are bound happen.

Jul 08, 2009 :: Tagged under: camp, education, free range kids, summer :: #

Summer Camp... in Your Front Yard

The San Francisco Chronicle has a great feature article on one particularly special front yard in California:

It’s a warm summer morning, and a Menlo Park play area is already teeming with children. Day camp is about to begin as the youngsters dig in the sandbox, take turns on the swings, shoot hoops and scribble on a 30-foot long whiteboard. Parents chat at a picnic table, and nearby, two toddlers splash in a bubbling fountain.

A typical scene – except that it’s not taking place at a city park; it’s in Mike Lanza’s front yard.

Lanza, the father of three boys, built the outdoor wonderland with a mission in mind. He wants children to rediscover the joys of playing freely outside, so he’s given all the kids in his neighborhood an open invitation to play in what he calls his “front yard family room.”

Since Mike first wrote about his Camp Yale plans over at Playborhood.com, I’ve been tickled pink about the idea. Wish I lived in his neighborhood!

It’s something that’s been talked about a lot lately, but it’s still easy to forget how crucial it really is for children to have time to play during the summer months. Declaring your neighborhood a “Playborhood” might be just the ticket for encouraging the kind of free, open-ended play that’s so valuable to all our lives…. The more thought I give it, the more I realize, too, how wonderfully perfect the “Playborhood” concept is for engendering the very significant, but often less considered benefits of rebuilding community among our neighborhoods, using our children’s play and our front lawns as catalysts.

We should never underestimate the value to us all when we build real communities: with our friends and family, among our neighbors, amidst those around us. The benefit is incalculable, especially when these communities happen to be built around our children.

So here’s to Camp Yale and Mike Lanza’s Playborhood. May there be many more like you everywhere.

Jul 05, 2009 :: Tagged under: free range kids, kids environments, play, playborhood :: #

Michael Chabon and The Wilderness of Childhood

A truly perfect Fourth of July treat from author Michael Chabon:

But the Wilderness of Childhood, as any kid could attest who grew up, like my father, on the streets of Flatbush in the Forties, had nothing to do with trees or nature. I could lose myself on vacant lots and playgrounds, in the alleyway behind the Wawa, in the neighbors’ yards, on the sidewalks. Anywhere, in short, I could reach on my bicycle, a 1970 Schwinn Typhoon, Coke-can red with a banana seat, a sissy bar, and ape-hanger handlebars. On it I covered the neighborhood in a regular route for half a mile in every direction. I knew the locations of all my classmates’ houses, the number of pets and siblings they had, the brand of popsicle they served, the potential dangerousness of their fathers. …

Childhood is, or has been, or ought to be, the great original adventure, a tale of privation, courage, constant vigilance, danger, and sometimes calamity. For the most part the young adventurer sets forth equipped only with the fragmentary map—marked here there be tygers and mean kid with air rifle—that he or she has been able to construct out of a patchwork of personal misfortune, bedtime reading, and the accumulated local lore of the neighborhood children.

Reading this is worth every ounce of the time and attention it asks of you.

(Via the tastily-named Media Macaroni.)

Jul 04, 2009 :: Tagged under: childhood, childhood experiences, free range kids, kids environments, michael chabon :: #

Roger Ebert and "Free Range Kids"

I love this… Roger Ebert (yep, the movie critic) recently latched onto the “Free Range Kids” idea, from Lenore Skenazy’s excellent book, and now he writes up a massively entertaining column from his persective about how our conceptions and regulations of childhood have changed since he was young.

Certainly today we take for granted things that we never imagined in our own childhoods, like child car seats, bike helmets, bottled water, security guards, sunblock, hand sanitizer and childproof bottles. I mentioned my childhood memory that we boys would pee behind trees, shrubbery, or garages (“If you run home, your mom might grab you and make you do something”). I forgot to mention that one of the reasons we needed to pee is that when we got thirsty we drank out of garden hoses—our own, and anybody else’s …

I had a free-range childhood. So did most kids who grew up before about the Vietnam era. Marijuana was unheard of in high school and even college. You felt safe when you left the house. At 16 I had a newspaper job requiring me to drive home at 2 a.m. No problem. In grade school my mom gave me an “emergency dime” to carry if I ever needed to call home. I still have it. Now parent get antsy if they don’t hear from a kid for more than a few hours.

Is all the paranoia surrounding childhood justified? Sometimes, Ebert writes, things are just out of our hands. “Shit happens,” as he kindly points out Forrest Gump tells us. You just deal with it. Likewise, kids will always be kids – they’ll play, make mistakes, and do stupid things. Of course similarly Ebert will always be Ebert, and that means working a movie into the discussion:

I am reminded of the 1938 movie “Angels With Dirty Faces,” about two kids who grew up as best friends in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan. One of them (James Cagney) became a killer who ended up on Death Row. The other one (Pat O’Brien) was the priest who walked the last mile with him. “All right, fellas,” the priest said after his childhood pal had been executed, “let’s go and say a prayer for a boy who couldn’t run as fast as I could.”

What always impresses me about Ebert’s constantly top-notch column, though, is the high level of conversation he has with his readers: the deep insight and reflection from some of the comments, especially about this post, are just unmatched.

Jul 01, 2009 :: Tagged under: free range kids, roger ebert, sociology of children :: #

Kids Put On Wrong Airplanes, End Up Somewhere Else

An unusual (?) piece from the Associated Press:

The mother of an 8-year-old girl who was put on the wrong plane while traveling unaccompanied blames the mix-up on “total incompetence and a lack of caring” by Continental Airlines.

Wendy Babineaux said Wednesday she’s “getting the run-around” from the airline while trying to find out how her daughter, Taylor Williams, flew out of Houston on Saturday and ended up in Fayetteville, Ark. She was supposed to go to Charlotte, N.C., to visit her father.

The next day, 10-year-old Miriam Kamens wound up in Newark, N.J., while flying alone on the same Continental contractor, ExpressJet. She was supposed to travel from Boston to Cleveland to see her grandparents.

How is this not just like the plot of “Home Alone 2”? And why on earth didn’t the kids totally eat up their newfound freedom?

(Insensitive of me? Probably. But I would’ve loved to get stranded somewhere totally random as a 10-year-old – I mean, as long as I had my dad’s credit card and a Talkboy voice recorder.)

Jun 17, 2009 :: Tagged under: flying, free range kids, homealone, kids :: #

Let the Kid Be

Lisa Belkin, writing for the New York Times Magazine, does a particularly good job examining one of the most disheartening trends of the day:

Perhaps you know it by its other names: helicoptering, smothering mothering, alpha parenting, child-centered parenting. Or maybe there’s a description you’ve coined on your own but kept to yourself: Overly enmeshed parenting? Get-them-into-Harvard-or-bust parenting? My-own-mother-never-breast-fed-me-so-I-am-never-going-to-let-my-kid-out-of-my-sight parenting?

There are, similarly, any number of theories as to why 21st-century mothers and fathers feel compelled to micromanage their offspring: these are enlightened parents, sacrificing their own needs to give their children every emotional, intellectual and material advantage; or floundering parents, trying their best to navigate a changing world; or narcissistic parents, who see their children as both the center of the universe and an extension of themselves.

But whatever you call it, and however it began, its days may be numbered. It seems as though the newest wave of mothers is saying no to prenatal Beethoven appreciation classes, homework tutors in kindergarten, or moving to a town near their child’s college campus so the darling can more easily have home-cooked meals …. Over coffee and out in cyberspace they are gleefully labeling themselves “bad mommies,” pouring out their doubts, their dissatisfaction and their dysfunction, celebrating their own shortcomings in contrast to their older sisters’ cloying perfection.

It’s nice to see how widespread a sentiment this is. Finally, slowly we’re moving away from the future-oriented parenting paradigm and getting back to the present.

May 29, 2009 :: Tagged under: free range kids, sociology of children :: #

Children are the New 1950s Housewives

Lenore Skenazy (“the world’s worst mom,” if you’ve been following her epic saga and the ensuing movement), in an essay for the Washington Post:

The reality is that kids today are just as capable and safe as we were. We got to play outside. We got to walk to school. And yet I was chatting with a mom in the park who won’t let her 13-year-old ride the bus by himself. I spoke with another mom whose condo association prohibits anyone under age 14 from playing outside without adult supervision. I remember when the 14-year-olds were the supervision. They were the babysitters! They started at age 11 or 12!

We’ve been brainwashed with fear and our children pay the price. We clip their wings and wonder why they’re bored, sad, fat – just like the housewives of our youth (but without the Living Bras). It’s time to fight the newest problem that has no name.

You thought sisterhood was powerful? Wait’ll we liberate childhood.

The comparison between kids today and the rise of feminism in the 1950s really is, unfortunately, far too true, although I’m glad Skenazy made it. (She’s magnificent, and you should read her book, Free Range Kids, if you haven’t already.)

I’m a Children’s Studies major in college – a relatively new field in it’s own right – and I’m happy to say that I do think we’re seeing a new paradigm of childhood starting to emerge. The range of what conceptually is accepted as childhood has become so limited, so controlled, that I think we’re about to see what can only be imagined as an explosive liberation of childhood – where kids’ rights, ability to meaningfully participate in society, and, yes, ability to roam freely will finally be restored.

Think of it as kid-ism if you will. Just, as Skenazy says, without the bras.

May 27, 2009 :: Tagged under: free range kids, lenoreskenazy, sociology of children :: #

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