Can We Vote for This Guy? (Even Though He’s 9?)

Hey Readers — You want inspiration? You got it: A 9 year old Detroit boy was dismayed by the fact his local park was totally overgrown — the city could afford to mow it just twice a year. So did he stay inside playing videogames?

He set up a lemonade stand and made $3000 over the course of five days. Donated it to Parks & Rec. This video is from when he was just getting started. You’ll love it!

Third Annual “TAKE OUR CHILDREN TO THE PARK…AND LEAVE THEM THERE DAY” coming up SAT., MAY 19!

Hi Folks! As our annual “Take Our Children to the Park…And Leave Them There Day” draws nigh (does “nigh” ever get used without the verb draw?), here’s a lovely piece about why it is GREAT for kids to get out and play, on their own, without a coach, program or parents to organize (or limit!) them.

The idea of the holiday is simple: We take our kids, age 7 or 8 and up, to the local park at 10 a.m. That way, they meet up with other kids from the neighborhood. We wave goodbye and the kids are on their own to come up with something to do. Boredom works in their favor — eventually they start playing because NOT playing is so painfully dull. By the time they’re through — it could be half an hour or half a day later — chances are they’ll want to do it again. And so Sunday becomes “Our kids are going to the park on their own” day, as do  most days thereafter!

If you’ve got younger kids — great. Go to the park and witness what your kids will be able to do in only a few years. Meantime, you’re there on the bench, creating the kind of community that reassures the parents waving their older kids goodbye.

SPREAD THE WORD!

The idea is not radical. It’s simply a way to “re-seed” the all-too-empty playgrounds and parks with children. There’s no reason kids can’t play on their own. Crime is down since when we parents were kids. Diabetes and obesity — the twin scourges of sitting inside — are up. What’s more, it is SAFER for kids to play than not to play, and this study (if you need to wave one around) says that letting kids play UNSUPERVISED is one of the best things a parent can do for a child:

Professor Roger Mackett, who led the study, said: “Allowing children to leave the house without an accompanying adult has significant benefits.

“The health benefits are clear, but without action the less tangible benefits of increased independence and self-reliance will be lost.

“That may be a very great loss with many implications.”

Fight the fear that has kept kids indoors or only in supervised programs. Go forth to Facebook and Twitter and the PTA to spread the word about Take Our Children to the Park… and Leave Them There Day!  And let us know if you get some traction! –  L

A Child Visitor to America Asks: “Where Are All The Kids?”

Hi Readers — This note was originally a comment on the post below this one. Its poignancy hit me particularly hard because today’s New York Times has a piece by Jane Brody — “Communities Learn Good Life Can be a Killer” —  about the effect of sprawl on health, autonomy and, of course,  childhood. I’m not sure how to suddenly re-urbanize vast swaths of suburbia, but I’m glad that city planners are looking into it. — L.

Dear Free-Range Kids: Before moving to my current home in Germany 6 years ago, I lived in a small town (about 5,000 people) in a different part of Germany. It was very Free-Range. Kids of all ages played outside in the smaller streets without adult supervision. The older kids watched out for the younger ones when a car drove by. Kids were always out playing in the neighborhood, either in the streets or at a local playground.

When my son was about 4 or 5, my family (husband, son, me) took a trip to California to visit family. In all of the neighborhoods where we stayed, nobody was on the streets. My son finally commented, “This must must be a really lonely place. Nobody is here.” He was so used to seeing the German streets in his neighborhood alive with kids playing and adults walking, cycling, or running. The empty streets in nice neighborhoods in California really threw him off.

During another CA trip, when my son was 9, he commented that he wouldn’t want to live there because you have to drive everywhere. He likes being able to walk or ride his bike over here and doesn’t really know anything different.

Kudos to Lori for making her town less of a “lonely place.” She is a beacon of hope for the Free-Range movement.  — Sue Biegeleisen

Helloooo? Anyone NOT home?

Outrage of the Week: School Cordons Off 3-Foot Hill

Hi Readers — Just got this note from David Robert Hogg, who blogs about traveling the world with kids at MyLittleNomads.com. Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill!  — L

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Dear Free- Range Kids: I live in Seattle. Home to hikers, snowboarders, world travelers. It seemed like everyone I know was giving their kids the freedom to explore pretty much how we did as kids. OK, maybe not quite, but close enough not to land us on the Outrage of the Week.

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Then I got our weekly email from my boys’ school. They are taping off a part of the playground because some kids had fallen, slipped, or tripped on it. Wrote the principal:

Dear Parents: After a few injuries caused by large groups of students running down the slope to line up after recess, I asked our custodial engineer to temporarily tape the area to keep students from running down the slope.

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I  have been communicating with our district gardeners and machinists to discuss a better solution such as landscaping the sloped area to prevent students from unsafely running down into it … I am also meeting with the Playground Committee this week and will seek their input on the improvements for safety reasons.

This is a "dangerous" hill?!

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Dear Principal (I wrote back): I was very disappointed to see the yellow tape around the dirt slope on the playground and even more disappointed to read your reasoning for it. 

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I’m a firm believer in the value of play – real play. There are risks, of course, that are serious enough to require intervention. A dirt hill with a 3 foot slope is not one of them. 

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In the simplest terms, what happens when a child falls while running down this slope? They learn they need to be careful when running down the slope! Remove the challenge and the consequences and you remove the opportunity to learn. Let me ask two questions:

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Are we making our kids any safer?

Almost certainly not. While potentially anything could happen with any fall, the majority of upsets are likely minor scrapes and bruises – if that. But more important, there’s evidence that removing small risks from a playground only serves to encourage greater risk taking – and prevents no injuries in the aggregate.

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Are we making kids any smarter?

The message we’re sending when we try to protect our children from trivial dangers like this is that we don’t trust them, their intelligence, their ability to learn. To be safe in the real world requires the ability to tell serious risk from manageable risk. Teachers talk in the classroom of getting kids to think independently – and then the children walk outside to see tape marking off a slope that a 2 year old could safely run down.

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Kids are better off  when they learn to navigate the real world than when they are protected from every possible risk. A playground that more closely resembles the real world makes for safer, stronger, and smarter children in the long run.

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It’s difficult to write seriously about such a trivial matter but I fear if I don’t speak up now that this policy of a zero-risk schoolyard will only grow stronger and our kids will pay a steep price. Steeper, even, than a 3-foot hill. — David Hogg

Guest Post by Greg Olear: Swan Song for Swings?

 Hi Folks! Here’s a guest post from Greg Olear, senior editor of The Nervous Breakdown and the author of the novels Totally Killer (Harper, 2009) and the brand-spanking-new Fathermucker, which concerns a single tumultuous day in the life of a stay-at-home dad. I absolutely adored Fathermucker — soooo funny and soooo spot-on about parenting foibles (every single, crazy one of them!!!!!!) — that I am delighted he’s writing here today! — L.

Swing No, Sweet Preschooler By Greg Olear

Last year, for a variety of reasons, we decided to move from the idyllic Hudson Valley to my hometown in no-longer-idyllic New Jersey.  Our son would be entering kindergarten in one of the best school districts in the country—the main impetus for our move—and it fell to me to find a suitable preschool for our daughter.

This proved more difficult than anticipated.  For one thing, my hometown had become, to my solidly-middle-class astonishment, the sort of tony suburb where you had to fork over 75 bucks to apply to a preschool. As we were new in town and thus late in the application process, this meant we’d quite possibly be paying $75 a pop for fancy letters regretting to inform us that enrollment was closed.  So we had to choose prudently.

One afternoon, my wife and I took a drive around town to tour the various preschools.  It was Sunday, so they were all closed. All we could do was check out the playgrounds.  And that’s when we noticed something unusual.

“These playgrounds all suck,” my wife said.

She was right.  Compared to the glorious expanse of fun our daughter had grown accustomed to at her preschool in upstate New York, these Jersey playgrounds were downright pathetic: small, cramped, and devoid of any remotely interesting equipment.  They looked more like pens for dogs than playgrounds for kids.

And then we realized, simultaneously, what was missing: “No swings!”

It was true—not one of these pricey preschools was endowed with a single swingset.  We guessed at reasons: lack of adequate space was the best one we could come up with (northern Jersey has become, in the years since I last lived there, as densely populated as an actual city).

Ultimately, we opted to send our daughter to a brand-spanking new preschool the next town over, even though it, like all the others, did not have a swingset.  We asked about this deficiency during the interview.

“The state inspectors strongly advised us against it,” the director told us.

“Why?”

“There are concerns that a small child might choke.”

“Choke?”

“You should have seen this great slide I bought for the playground,” she said wistfully.  “I had to return it.”

There are two ways you can get hurt on a swing: 1) The swingset breaks, or 2) You let go.  That’s it.  (Contrary to urban legend, it is physically impossible for a child not wearing a jetpack to swing high enough to go over the top.)  But choking?  How exactly would someone choke on a swingset?  Why are we — that is, why are insurance companies, who charge prohibitive premiums in New Jersey for preschool swings —worried about this?  Has this ever happened in the history of time?*

I thought of my own childhood, the countless hours my two- and three-year-old self spent contentedly swinging back and forth and back and forth.  There was nothing I enjoyed more than that. But kids in my hometown would now be deprived of that pleasure, because of the bureaucratic fear of an outcome that is about as likely as alien abduction.

The school we chose proved terrific — great teachers, ambitious curriculum, etc. My daughter, now a kindergartener, loved it there so much, she likes to go back for lengthy visits during her vacations.  But she may have loved it even more if there were swings.

*Apparently, it has.  According to safekids.org, 147 children perished from “playground equipment-related injuries” from 1990-2000. Most were on equipment at a private home, but about 40 weren’t. (That is, four a year.) And strangulation — usually caused when the pull-cord from a sweatshirt gets caught on the equipment — was the leading cause of those 147 deaths. I couldn’t locate statistics for swingset strangulation deaths specifically, but it seems, to me, highly improbable, way more improbable than being struck by lightning. — G.O. 

Is this child in grave danger? New Jersey says, "YES!"

Perv Alert! Man Seen Photographing Boy at Park!

Hi Readers — This just in! A creepy old guy was seen taking pix of some young boy in Idaho. The cops were called! The media alerted! Hearts pounded, rage burbled, all because…

Um, a grandpa was photographing his grandson.

He left when some crazy lady started yelling at him. Here’s the story.  — L

All Adults Are Potential Predators (Even Ladies Eating Donuts at the Park)

Hi Readers: The headline on this story says it all — almost: Women Ticketed for Eating Donuts in a Brooklyn Park. The REASON these women were ticketed was not the donuts, it was the lack of children with them.

Local law — that is, the law in my insane city — says no adults are allowed on playgrounds unless they are accompanied by kids. In other words, my city officially believes there is absolutely no decent reason any adult would or should ever want to be around frolicking kids. (Or swings. Or jungle gyms.)

If that reminds you of segregation, it should — because that’s exactly what it is. We are segregating adults from children who aren’t their own. And, just like the earlier segregation parts of our country condoned, the idea is the same: Keep people apart by warning them about each other. One is innocent and good and pure, one is monstrous and lewd and uncontrollable. Must to separate.

Way to go, New York. — Lenore

Mmm! Predator Chow!

They Left Their Kids at the Park and Then…

Hi Readers! Here’s a note I got from one of you right before “Take Our Children to the Park…And Leave Them There Day,” last Saturday, May 21:

Dear Free-Range Kids: We’re doing it as a communal group, with about 9 kids thus far from my various friends. We’re even letting them ride their bikes over instead of driving them. Our plan for the day is to go shoot paintball. (Why should the kids be the only ones to have fun with their counterparts about?)

I think parents need some non-parental time in their lives, which is becoming less and less these days as we become more paranoid about letting kids out of our sights. — Sean in upstate New York

Well Sean’s plan sounded good, so I asked him to let me know how it went. And he did!

Dear Free-Range Kids: The day went great. Since I’m fairly central to everyone, and close to the local park, my place got picked as home base. I woke up early, and knowing I was about to be taking on more than thirty people between kids and grown-ups, I started knocking out breakfast (I’m a cook, it’s what I do), which was made up of pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage, and biscuits.My niece, who just turned five, helped with the eggs and pancakes, and thus needed to change clothes before people arrived.

Everyone converged on the house at about 7:30-8:00 am, and it was on. We went through a few gallons of sweet tea, a gallon of orange juice and several pitchers of Kool-Aid, and my niece kept regaling everyone about how she cooked the eggs and pancakes. After that, we packed up lunches for everyone, and put the eldest, 11, in charge — something she smiled almost evilly about. But we figured there were enough other kids to form a coup if it got too bad. She had a cell phone, the time and place for us to meet up, and was left with $20 emergency/ice cream truck money. Then we waved goodbye to kids as they all mounted their bikes and pedaled off.

The other twenty of us loaded up into cars and vans next, and drove on up to Scaticoke for a day of paintball, and because we had so many people, we got a group rate. We spent all day running back and forth through woods and hills shooting paint at each other, laughing, joking, and okay, a pretty good rash of swearing at times too, but everyone was having a blast. We did get a call while we were breaking for lunch because the 11-year-old didn’t know if she was allowed to use the pavilion for lunch eating. We assured her it was  fine. Then we ran around like idiots for another few hours after eating, and, thoroughly bedecked with paint, realized we were supposed to have left a half hour earlier.

When we arrived, there was Jenna with the rest of gang, tapping her foot like a parent watching her kid slip in after curfew. So we called for everyone to count off (a system we worked out so each kid has their own number, so we know immediately if someone is missing). The count went to nine, and then we hit a minor skid: it then went to ten and eleven. This ended up having an explanation.

The kids had arrived at the park with lunches as well as gear for some games such as Wiffle ball, kickball, ultimate frisbee, and soccer. Well, apparently, while they were playing monster ball (a mash up of kickball and wiffle ball), a couple neighborhood kids decided to join in, and Jenna had given them each a number immediately. The kids hung out all day, and this is where we found out something interesting: They’d all eaten their lunches together as well, even though the other two hadn’t brought any. Jenna and a few others had split part of theirs so everybody got something to eat, and the same went with the ice cream truck money. No one had to tell them, or force anyone to include them, and they hadn’t just been left out. The kids took care of each other without question, or prodding.

Well, we got phone numbers for the newcomers so they could set up some playtime again another time. From there, we rounded up our guys, and went off to  CiCi’s, an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet, for dinner. The only problem left was that pretty much all of the kids (and a few of the adults) fell asleep in the car on the way back. Otherwise, went off without a hitch. We’re probably going to set up another day like that somewhere in the future when we have time and money for it again. It was just too much fun to only do once. — Sean

The date on the photo of THIS park day is June 23, 2011 -- a hundred years ago!

SATURDAY! Take Our Children to the Park…And Leave Them There Day!

Hi Readers! Here’s a piece I wrote for my syndicated column:

Coming up this Saturday is holiday you didn’t celebrate as a child, because you didn’t have to. You just got up, ate breakfast and sped off to the park. No big deal.

Except it is now. Around the country, the parks are empty. Or, if there are kids around, they’re tiny tots on the jungle gym with parents poised tensely below, arms open, ready for the worst. The older kids are at home on their computers, or off at travel soccer, or studying with a tutor. Or they’re simply told, “It’s too dangerous out there,” – “there” being any place beyond the doormat. That’s why I declared the Saturday before Memorial Day, “Take Our Children to the Park…And Leave Them There Day.”

Last year, when I started this holiday, it got the kind of treatment I have come to expect from the fear-is-dear media: It was ridiculed on about six or seven TV shows, with the reporters interviewing terrified parents in the park and coming back to tell the anchor, “Nobody thinks this is a safe idea.”

Of course not! How could they, when the “news” makes it sound like we are living in Armageddon? (Which, come to think of it, is also slated for Saturday.) Where do you think folks get the idea that the very same parks they played in as kids are now cesspools of danger and depravity? One network even interviewed a lawyer who hinted that any parent allowing a kid to go to the park could be charged with child endangerment, which is patently untrue, unless the child is extremely young and helpless. I suggest that kids be at least seven or eight years old – the age kids walk to school in the rest of the world — before being allowed to play for maybe half an hour on their own, at the local playground. Is that so nuts?

A lot of people think it is. But the idea that stranger danger is rampant is unfounded. Crime is DOWN since the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s, when today’s parents were kids playing in the park. The societal ills actually trending up have to do with NOT playing outside: Childhood obesity, childhood depression, childhood diabetes. We forget that when we try to keep our kids “absolutely” safe, cooped up inside, there’s a tradeoff.

What happens when we give them a bit of the freedom we had?  Well, some bumps and bruises, of course, but some key developmental milestones, too.

When kids are – this is a weird word – “forced” to play on their own, they actually develop some rather amazing skills. The first is creativity: they have to create something to do, without pressing a button. Second comes communication: They have to explain the game to their friends. Then comes compromise – if the friends want to play something else – and diplomacy: making the teams equal. Giving the younger kid an easier pitch requires empathy, and granting that the ball was “out” requires grace. Those are all skills that kids will need later on in life, and even not so later on: The ability to wait one’s turn on the ball field develops the ability to wait one’s turn in class.

So “Take Our Children to the Park…And Leave Them There Day” is not an exercise in neglect. It’s the opposite: it’s nurturing independence, which just happens to be the end-goal of parenting.

If you want to participate, I’m suggesting that you bring your kids to your local park at about 10 in the morning, so that everyone in the neighborhood can meet each other. With any luck, suddenly the park will be alive, once again, with child development.

Er…you know, kids. Having fun.

Bring life back to the park!

Two Stories You Won’t Hear on the News

Hi Readers! Here you go! — L

Dear Free-Range Kids: I live in a small town (less than 300 residents) in Southwest Pennsylvania,  and regardless of the image the local-ish news channels portray, it is VERY safe. I grew up in the house I am living in, my  parents live next door.

The other day I was working in the yard, repainting some furniture. I heard my 2-year-old come out  then turn around and bang on the door she just exited. My mom came to the door and asked Gwen if she wanted to come in. I didn’t hear anything else, and when I looked up a few minutes later and didn’t see my daughter, I assumed she had gone in with my mom. A couple minutes later, I went in to clean up. When I didn’t see my daughter, I asked where she was. Mom said she thought Gwen was outside with me. This started a search of the yard (large, nearly 3/4 acre, all fenced in), something that happens a couple times on most days. When we determined Gwen wasn’t there, we started walking up the street. Mom found her standing in front of a neighbor’s house three homes away, looking for the back-hoe she’d seen the day before. The neighbor who lived there was just walking over to Gwen to bring her down and see if she was ours. My next door neighbor, who was leaving for work, was also just coming out to see whose child it was.

Total result? A minute of semi-panic when we realized my two-year-old wasn’t in the yard. A five-minute conversation with a normally anti-social neighbor about her grown daughter at the toddler stage. And when my father came home, he moved the gate latch to the outside of the fence so Gwen can’t open it again. Nobody called the police or child protective services, no injuries occurred, and Gwen wasn’t even fazed  — though she WAS disappointed that the big machines were gone.

This is a big deal to me because Pittsburgh news (our closest “local” news) runs nearly weekly reports of parents going to court-mandated parenting classes or even losing their children because of similar occurrences where toddlers get out and wander unsupervised. In all of these occasions, when neighbors find random children, they don’t look for a parent, they seem to START by calling the police.

Then, today we went to our nearest park to play on the big swings. The park is right against the Youghigheny River, so there are a lot of water fowl. Gwen played until she realized the ducks were there! She wanted to go look. While there, she had a lovely conversation about the ducks with an older gentleman (75 or 80 years, probably), who was sitting on a bench watching the ducks, too. I actually walked back to the car (about 20 yards away) to get her drink while she sat and watched with him. She probably sat still for longer than anywhere else today. He was polite, patient, and seemed to find her constant observations about the ducks adorable.

Thankfully, the local city has not succumbed to the temptation to bar adults from enjoying the same areas as children, because both my daughter and the gentleman had a wonderful time.

Moral of the story: There are some areas of the country that haven’t completely succumbed to insanity, and I am SO happy to live in one of them, since we have been Free-Range with Gwen since she first became mobile. — A Happy Pennsylvania Mom

WTD? What happens when a toddler watches ducks with someone other than her parent?