Funny, Sad Piece: When Did Kids Stop Knowing How to Play?

Hi Readers — I’ll write about my fabulous day with Mary Duval and her “sex offender” son soon, but first: One of you just sent in this piece that resonated so much. It’s called, “Frolicking 101: When Did Kids Stop Knowing How to Play?” by comedian/essayist Sarah Maizes. Excerpt:

My kids are frolicking!  Really!! MY children!

They’re outside, they’re running around, they’re having fun – without colorful plastic toys, without a play structure, without an adult overseeing, supervising, or facilitating…without ME!

Just a big backyard, rolling grass, a random hill or two and my kids.  I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.

Maybe this wouldn’t be such a big deal if I were used to it.  But I’m not.  We don’t live in the country.  This is just our summer vacation.  At home, my kids almost never play outside, and they certainly don’t play outside without me standing there beside them suggesting what to play and showing them exactly how to play it.

This is such a common situation, I recognized it from my own life. In fact, that’s why I started, “Take Our Children to the Park…And Leave them There Day” — the idea was to have kids encounter each other, outside, and then come up with something to do. What a radical plan! Anyway, here’s hoping that a whole lot of kids are outside today, figuring out — as did this author’s children — that when you find  a grassy hill and you are on top of it, you can propel yourself downward while, in fact, prone.

Simple as that. — Lenore

Forget World Peace — Miss America Longs for Free-Range Future!

In the interview portion of  Saturday Night’s Miss America pageant, Caressa Cameron (Miss Virginia), was asked to talk about childhood obesity. To which she responded, “We need to get our kids back outside, playing with sticks in the street like I did when I was little…Expand your mind, go outside and get to see what this world is like.”

She won! For this, we unofficially crown Caressa Miss Free-Range America 2010. If and when we ever meet, we will gift unto her: a stick.

Miss America's vision for a better future. Photo credit: Mads Boedker

Wield it with pride, Caressa. But be careful not to poke somebody’s eye out. — Lenore

Protecting Kids from “Dangers” Like Rhinestones. And Books.

Hi Readers! Remember during the summer I ran a post by businessman Rick Woldenberg about the wacky new Consumer Product Safety law? Here’s a little of what he said:

Readers of Free-Range Kids may not be surprised to learn that Congress has enacted far-reaching legislation to save your children from the dangers involved in reading an old book, riding a new bike or even using a Barbie pen. That is, if after using these items, they generally eat them. 

Feel safer already? The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act  became law on August 14, 2008 and it dramatically changes the way we regulate children’s product safety.  After several toys from China were recalled in 2007/8 for high levels of lead, Congress wanted to do something – anything — so it did. And went way overboard.

Until then, the Consumer Product Safety Commission focused only on products that posed an actual threat to your child’s safety – things like faulty car seats, or toys with small parts that could break off and cause choking. Under the new law, Congress imposes arbitrary standards that require the manufacturers of pens, shoes, t-shirts, ATVs, bikes, books, backpacks and toys to “prove” the safety of their products, and label them a new way.

 It sounds like a good idea to prove your product is safe before it hits the shelves. But because the law now covers every single product made for children up to age 12, many products well-known for being safe –  books! socks! — are being regulated for the very first time. Huge wasteful costs are being imposed on all of these products.

Think about it: Less than 0.01% of all children’s products are recalled in a typical year. But now the other 99.99% will have to prove their safety first.

That law lead to horrors like thrift shops throwing out their pre-1985 children’s books because they couldn’t prove that the ink inside those books was lead-free. Really!

So finally Congress is holding a hearing on the law this  Thursday, Sept. 10. You’d think our elected offiicials would call in some scientists, or even parents, who could pretty effectively argue that this law covers  way too many products that really are not harming children. Things like rhinestones on T-shirts, and the rocks studied in geology class. (Not radium. Rocks!) 

The problem is not just that this law is ridiculously all-encompassing. It’s that that the law gives the Consumer Product Safety Commission zero  flexibility to exercise judgment: anything that may have lead in it, even if the agency ITSELF believes there is absolutely no health risk, is still banned. Calling Kafka!

Unfortunately, the Committee inexplicably is planning to call exactly one witness to this hearing: the chairwoman of the Consumer Products Safety Commission herself. That excludes, obviously, folks like Rick, a maker of educational toys, and folks like me, a mom who argues that as much as I adore safety we are going overboard trying to protect children from unbelievably remote dangers. Including the dangers of eating books and socks and rocks.

The whole Free-Range philosophy is that we cannot protect children from everything without sealing them inside a tower (which poses its own dangers, agreed?). And to protect kids from old books — sheesh. Where would I have been without my dog-eared, yellowing copy of “Little Women” growing up? A book I loved but somehow managed not to eat?

If you’d like to write an email protesting this law or lack of public input, please send it to housecpsiahearing@cox.net.  Rick says he will make certain it’s submitted. For additional information and to see Rick’s letter go to http://tiny.cc/DIRiy. 

Thanks — Lenore (off to munch on a delicious chunk of granite)

Study: More Gym + Nutrition Ed Doesn’t Slim Kids Down (And I Think I Know Why)

Cool entry on the “Alas, A Blog” blog   questioning the conventional wisdom that holds: If only kids had more gym, health and nutrition classes, they’d all slim down. An eight-year study of about 1700 kids gave half of them a greatly enhanced gym/nutrition/health curriculum (and healthier cafeteria food), while the other half got the same old same old.  Kids were measured in third grade and again in fifth and surprise (there goes the grant!), there was no difference in the two groups as far as weight was concerned.

The “Alas” blogger rightly asks whether weight should matter anyway: If the group with the gym curriculum was more active, happy or fit, that certainly seems more important than whether they could squeeze into smaller undies. But MY point is that I’m not surprised by the outcome, because it’s not just gym that makes a difference in kids’ lives. It’s what kids do OUTSIDE of school, too.

BEYOND GYM

When principals forbid them to ride their bikes to school (and I’ll post a another Outrage about that soon),  when  parents are afraid to let them go to the park, when their friends are not allowed to venture out the front door, what can kids do before or after school except hang out inside?

And what generally happens there? They’re not jogging in place while poking around YouTube. And if they’re watching TV, cue the dancing Pop-Tarts! Even organized sports programs don’t offer the insurance of exercise (or fun). When my kids were playing on our local Y’s baseball team, they stood around for about 60 of the 90 minutes, waiting in the outfield for a ball that never came, or waiting for their turn at bat that felt like it would never come, or eating the snack that always DID come, because we parents were required to schlep it. (Why was snack a requirement, anyway?)

In short: We can program as much health as we want into the curriculum, and as the sister of a former high school health-ed teacher, I say: Yay! Let’s do it! I’m all for health class. BUT until we start letting kids get out there and organize their own games of tag, and kick ball and roll down the steep, rocky hill (okay, maybe not that one — Free-Range has its limits), they’re going to be inside. Who’s dancing and prancing and getting all that healthy exercise in  there?

Looks like the Pop-Tarts.  — Lenore, who thanks Kelly Hogaboom for sending this story in.  Kelly’s blog is right here!

Free-Range Kids Changes A Mom (And Two Childhoods)

Hi Readers — This letter, received today, made me cheer. For the mom, for the kids, for the movement!

From a mom named Mia:

I do very much wish to thank you for writing and sharing this blog.  It is changing my life and that of my children and I suppose you could call me a convert of sorts.

It feels like such a relief, a weight lifted from my shoulders, a permission of sorts to be the kind of parent I feel comfortable being.  And that kind of parent is not one who approaches child-rearing with fear and quilt, rarely able to take a deep breath and relax.  I am so weary of the excessive worry about every little thing – and the pressure, judgment  and competition from other mothers to see who can cushion their child the most.

I want to be a free range mom!  The thoughtfulness behind your articles and the intelligence of your reader’s discussions have emboldened me to change it up and let loose a bit around here –

A week ago I let my 11 year old leave the dentist’s office we were at (for his brothers appointment)  to walk alone, out of my sight, across the semi-busy shopping center to the McDonald’s and buy an ice cream cone.  He was so proud of himself .  And I felt such shame that I had never before allowed my son to feel this accomplishment and confidence.  Next time there is a dentist appointment for his brother he can stay home alone and I know he’ll be just fine.

Yesterday I let him make a boxed mac & cheese.  I wasn’t even in the same room where he was boiling water on the gas stove for the 1st time.  Just hollered out my answers to any questions he had.  He did it!  And his grin of pride was huge.

Also yesterday, I let my 8yo son go outside alone for the 1st time.  To go to friends homes and see if anyone could play, or maybe go to the park on the corner and find some kids there to play with.  He rode his bike and he stopped by often – for popsicles, to give home tours to new friends, to grab a ball, to get our puppy and participate in an impromptu 5-child dog walking trip around the neighborhood.  And with the age old twin calls of hunger and twilight, he was back home, grinning and enthusiastically asking if he could do it all over again tomorrow.

Ahh,  *now* I’m breathing and it feels like fun and happiness.

And with that, readers, a great weekend to all! — Lenore

Why Is Congress “Protecting” Children from Books?

Hi, Free-Rangers: Here’s a really thought-provoking (okay, outrage-provoking) guest blog from Rick Woldenberg, a businessman in Illinois who believes in safety, but not in spending millions to protect our our children from nearly  non-existent dangers. Read on!

By Rick Woldenberg 

Readers of Free-Range Kids may not be surprised to learn that Congress has enacted far-reaching legislation to save your children from the dangers involved in reading an old book, riding a new bike or even using a Barbie pen. That is, if after using these items, they generally eat them. 

Feel safer already? The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act  became law on August 14, 2008 and it dramatically changes the way we regulate children’s product safety.  After several toys from China were recalled in 2007/8 for high levels of lead, Congress wanted to do something – anything — so it did. And went way overboard.

Until then, the Consumer Product Safety Commission focused only on products that posed an actual threat to your child’s safety – things like faulty car seats, or toys with small parts that could break off and cause choking. Under the new law, Congress imposes arbitrary standards that require the manufacturers of pens, shoes, t-shirts, ATVs, bikes, books, backpacks and toys to “prove” the safety of their products, and label them a new way.

 It sounds like a good idea to prove your product is safe before it hits the shelves. But because the law now covers every single product made for children up to age 12, many products well-known for being safe –  books! socks! — are being regulated for the very first time. Huge wasteful costs are being imposed on all of these products.

Think about it: Less than 0.01% of all children’s products are recalled in a typical year. But now the other 99.99% will have to prove their safety first.  Guess who pays for this? 

The cost to you will be high – in more ways than one.   Not only are prices inevitably going to rise to pay for all this testing and labeling, but many of the products and companies you depend on may go under or leave the market. Small businesses, yes, including ours – we make math toys for schools — are threatened by these needless new costs.

The law also makes it difficult and risky for Goodwill, the Salvation Army and other charities to sell or give away used children’s products, because merely by selling something with plastic or old ink, they might be breaking the law. Thrift stores are reacting to the new regulations by closing their children’s departments. Some have actually THROWN OUT any children’s books printed before 1985. That’s when printing ink still included lead – which might be a problem if children sat down and ate books, page by page, but is no problem at all if they just read them.

 The law of unintended consequences is certainly at work here.  Small businesses like ours have screamed for relief to no avail.   The cost of pre-sale testing alone may force many out of business. Shoemakers don’t know why children need to be protected from licking the soles of their shoes, and pen companies worry that kids won’t be allowed to use ballpoint pens in the future. After all, there is some lead in the tiny ball that could, conceivably, be extracted and eaten by a child with strange tastes and a pair of microscopic, needle-nosed pliers.

 Meantime, some libraries have even cordoned off their children’s books, presumably to keep kids from licking their Green Eggs and Ham.  And guess who encouraged them? The current Acting Chairman of the Consumer Products Safety Commission!  

This safety controversy has made our country an international laughingstock.

Supporters of the law think it is “better to be safe than sorry.” I suppose if eating your dirt bike is a real risk in your household, they could be right. Sadly, Congress thinks we’d best prepare for any eventuality, no matter how tiny the danger, and how unlikely it is to occur.  If you want to express your concerns to Congress about this far-reaching, ill-thought-out law, click here.

If you are a child: Please do so with your finger – and NO LICKING!

 — Rick Woldenberg, Chairman, Learning Resources, Inc., Vernon Hills, Illinois

rwoldenberg@learningresources.com

 

P.S. Lenore here. A friend just sent me this great (if long) article about the same topic, and how crunchy, all-natural toy makers find themselves strangely allied with stalwart Republicans in opposing this new, excessive regulation: http://www.reason.com/news/show/133228.html

Why One Mom Lets Her Son Walk to the Bus Stop Now

Hi Folks!
Here’s a short, sweet post by Seattle reporter Denise Gonzalez-Walker, who did something radical: She met her neighbors. It changed the way she’s raising her son:

By Denise Gonzalez-Walker

 

I recently finished a temporary job that gave me new perspective on the Free-Range philosophy. Working as a U.S. Census canvasser, I went door-to-door in my community, verifying addresses and other mundane information, like if someone had turned their backyard into a new condo development.

  Think about it for a minute: Would you be willing to knock on every door in your ‘hood?

  My area of the city is “colorful,” with everything from tidy cottages to messy shacks with broken-down cars in the yard. It’s where my family lives. Where my son catches his bus.

 But I’ve always wondered if I should trust my neighborhood. The census job gave me chance to find out.

 A few women I met acted as if I was nuts. Who knows? The bogeyman himself might be lurking behind that next door, waiting to snatch me, torture me and kill me, they’d say. I hated those exchanges, which made me feel anxious and paranoid.

 My 11 year-old son also worried about me at first. Talk about turning the tables! When I came home from my first day of training and relayed that a census worker in another state had been killed on the job, his eyes grew big. 

“Shot?” he asked, “Stabbed?”

 No, I told him, the worker had died in a car crash while driving between locations.

 By the end of my job, our group of canvassers had visited 32,000 homes. The calamities, in total? One minor car accident and a dog bite. In other words, reality matched what the statistics say about the risks of walking door-to-door and — gasp — meeting people in your community.

 By knocking on those doors, I came to trust my neighborhood a lot more. So when my son asked me if he could start walking alone to the bus stop two blocks away, I didn’t hesitate. “Sure,” I said. “But be sure to watch out for cars!”

 ###

What Happens When Kids Can’t Play

Hello, Readers! We have another guest post today, this one from developmental psychologist Dr. Helene Guldberg, a founder of the wonderful, British, on-line current affairs blog, Spiked (www.spiked-online.com). She’s also author of Reclaiming Childhood: Freedom and Play in an Age of Fear. The thing I found most shocking in this post is that you can’t even take photos of any kid other than yours at a birthday party in England anymore.  It’s considered tantamount to porn. Oy.

 By Helene Guldberg

Growing up on the outskirts of Bergen, in Norway, I was given a lot of freedom to roam outside from a very early age. Norwegians have a unique, maybe rather obsessive, love of outdoor pursuits and therefore, whether in sunshine, sleet or snow, we were always building dens, playing on building sites, and having all kinds of adventures in the woods or by the fjord.

As Free-Range Kids readers are well aware, children are today losing out on many childhood experiences that we took for granted. In Reclaiming Childhood: Freedom and Play in an Age of Fear I show how important unsupervised play is for all aspects of children’s development – their social, emotional, cognitive and physical development. Children need to be given space away from adults’ watchful eyes – in order to play, experiment, take risks (within a sensible framework provided by adults), test boundaries, have arguments, fight, and learn how to resolve conflicts. Today, they are increasingly denied these opportunities.

But the blame for this steady erosion of unsupervised play should not be pinned on parents. The root of the problem is not their fears but the fact that parents are continually discouraged from entrusting their children to other adults. In the UK, it is a crime to work with children without first being vetted by the authorities. The Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act, passed into law in 2006, requires that millions of adults whose work involves coming into contact with children must undergo Criminal Records Bureau checks. The message this gives to parents and children is to be suspicious of any adult who comes into contact with young people.

Also, it is almost impossible in Britain today to take photos of one’s children, grandchildren, nieces or nephews in public places if they are surrounded by other children. The rules governing the use of cameras and camera-phones in swimming pools, parks, at children’s parties, school sports days and any other place where children might be present are ubiquitous and strictly enforced. The kind of photos that have traditionally appeared in many a family album are now treated as being akin to potential child pornography.

Ultimately parents will only give children the independence they need if they have sufficient trust in other adults – trust in them not to harm their children, but to look out for them. When we grew up our parents assumed that if we got into trouble, other adults – often strangers – would help out. Today that trust does not exist – or, at least, it has been seriously damaged by government policy, media debate and a rising culture of suspicion towards adults’ motives.

Only by challenging the safety-obsessed culture that depicts every adult as a potential threat can we start to build a better future – and present — for our children and ourselves.
——————————————————————————————————
Dr Helene Guldberg’s book, Reclaiming Childhood: Freedom and Play in an Age of Fear, is available on Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/d2sxgm

TREATING PETS LIKE CHILDREN (SORRY, PETS!)

Dearest Readers — I have been thinking of what to say about this new product but frankly, my jaw just keeps going slack. Ditto my sarcasm skills. So here goes, from the website Baby Sounds 4 Pets (http://www.babysounds4pets.com/ ):

I have 2 passions in my life,my pets and becoming a mother. Three years ago while my sister was expecting her first child, I was looking for a CD of baby sounds to prepare her two dogs and cat for the arrival of my nephew. I couldn’t find one ANYWHERE!

So I decided to create BABY SOUNDS FOR PETS! THE FIRST CD OF IT’S KIND!

BABY SOUNDS helped my sister,and many couples,prepare their anxious pets for the sounds of a new baby in their home. It is preparing my chihuahua ‘FRED’ for our first baby this year

It’s a CD of gurgling, cooing and, of course, WAILING.

I’m sure that once Chihuahua Fred has heard pre-recorded wailing for a few weeks, he will be very eager to meet a live creature who does the same, often in the middle of the night.

Meantime, I’m trying to think just how smart a pet would have to be to be “anxious” about its humans’ impending parenthood. Has he been staring at the sonogram on the fridge with furrowed brow? That’s some pooch!

Anyway, this is not totally a Free-Range issue, but it does have a certain resonance because once again – this time with pets instead of children – we are imagining that there’s no way they could possibly just adjust to life as it comes at ’em.  No, they need pampering, preparation, and of course products.

So much for rolling with the punches.

Even the very species known for rolling.   – Lenore

 

Babyproofing Hysteria

Each week I get an email blast called “Connect with Kids” that veers between helpful and crazy-making. Today it’s the latter. (http://www.connectwithkids.com/tipsheet/2009/430_mar25/thisweek/090325_house.shtml)

In a little article about babyproofing, it quotes an “expert” who casts her eyes around a new parent’s home and, “immediately spots something she doesn’t like in the kitchen. Plastic trash bags.”

Continues the blog: “‘You think these are great for your trash cans, well, they are, but it’s terrible for your baby,’ she explains. ‘Children love plastic. For some reason, they are drawn to it. They will eat it, and they will suffocate.'”

Excuse me, but children are not drawn to eating plastic bags. This expert has confused children with turtles (who may or may not confuse plastic bags with jelly fish).

The threat to children from plastic bags happens when a bag falls onto them and they are too young to be able to pull it off, or even to lift their heads to catch a breath. Very young. The other threat is when children fall asleep against a plastic bag and, again, their neck muscles are too young and weak for them to turn their heads to breathe. Here’s a report on just that from the Consumer Product Safety Commission: http://www.cpsc.gov/CPSCPUB/PUBS/5064.html Also note that 90% of the kids who die are under age 1. They are not eating bags. They are accidentally smothered.

Of course, any parents reading this babyproofer’s advice may well think that now they must banish that staple, the plastic garbage bag, from their kitchens. I know, I know — plastic garbage bags are bad for the environment. What I’m talking about, though, is how blithely parents are expected to upturn their lives in the interests of preventing an exceedingly, excessively, outrageously unlikely danger.

If we acted that way with grown-up dangers we’d be wearing helmets at work (a plant could fall off the file cabinet!) and drinking that awful office coffee from our hands (because plastic cups contain hardeners, paper has been chemically treated, mugs may leach glaze and bottles could shatter). (The coffee is awful just because it always is.)

At some point we have to say to ourselves there is only so much we can worry about. And I say this as a bona fide worrier — ask my kids.

So yes, by all means, do try to keep your child safe. Ask a babyproofer’s advice, if you’d like. Nothing wrong with that. But also try to keep danger in perspective: The average American home is not a death trap.

(The mortgage – that’s another story.) — Lenore