How to Host a School Picnic (With Almost Zero Planning)

Hi Readers! As you know, one of the things that I believe makes folks feel safer and more ready to Free-Range their kids is COMMUNITY. The more connected we are, the less threatening the “world out there” seems, since “out there” is now familiar, even friendly. That’s why I love the idea of block parties and school get-togethers and all that, but I know (since I have never had the guts to organize one myself) that volunteering to make one of these wonders happen can be daunting. That’s why I loved reading this note from a mom in Portland, Oregon, named Mitzi. Here’s what she discovered about organizing an all-school picnic:

Dear Free-Range Kids: Our school started what we hope becomes a new tradition—a Fall Family Picnic on the school grounds one of the first evenings of school.

The idea is to have a low-key, casual picnic where families can meet, mingle, and re-connect after the summer break. We kept it super-simple: prep was limited to spreading the word about the picnic, putting up signs on the school yard for each grade so families could more easily meet others at their kids’ grade levels and having a pizza company come in to sell slices (and as a PTO fundraiser). Other than some ice-breaker games for Kindergarten kids, we had no planned activities: no bouncy houses, no rock wall, no clowns or face-painting or relay games. As PTO President, I was basically in charge of the event and wanted to keep it simple. I had a moment of panic about half an hour before picnic started: WHAT WERE WE THINKING?? What if we have 100 (or more) kids show up and they’re totally bored because we have nothing to entertain them with!? Will I have a bunch of angry parents shocked that I hadn’t planned activities? While there is a big play structure at the school, I hadn’t even requested to use the school’s playground balls and equipment. I threw some of our own kick balls, hula hoops and sidewalk chalk into the minivan, said a prayer and headed to the school.

And the result? Kids, everywhere, playing and having a blast. On their own. At least I assume they were having a blast—I was too busy mingling and chatting with other parents to pay much attention to my kids, other than to offer another slice of pizza when they came back to our blanket for a water break or to say hi. But if the shrieks of laughter and good-natured playing yelling were any indication, all the kids had fun. It’s amazing, isn’t it, what happens when we just let kids play? — Mitzi

With PTAs Like These…

Hi Readers — As the school year gears up and we are talking about how great it is when kids walk to school, here’s a “real world” note I just got from one guy. Sigh:

My children’s  school has no school buses, and at our first PTA meeting one parent was being praised for setting up a private school bus, paid for by the parents.

I mentioned that since everyone is close enough to walk, that’s what we should be focusing on, getting more children to walk, but everyone comes up with the “what if?” arguments.

To which I replied, “What if?” is the greatest two-word idea killer of all time. To which my correspondent replied:

Even sadder was when I was showing actual statistics to back up my arguments that walking is much safer than driving, the head of the PTA stated: “Statistics mean nothing when it comes to the safety of my child.” To which everyone applauded.

Argh. Never said it would be easy. If any of you can think of a way to sway parental minds closed to health, safety, common sense, environmentalism and a belief in outdoor time for kids, please help this guy with some good arguments for the next PTA debacle. Er, meeting. — Lenore

Why Is It So Hard to Get Kids Walking to School?

Hi Readers — I’m still on the road and just gave a speech in Chicago sponsored by the National Center for Safe Routes to School. (A jolly bunch!)  Safe Routes reps every state gathered to talk about the pressing question: How can we get more kids walking to school? The organization says  that a generation ago, two thirds of f kids walked or biked to school. Today, 20-25% do. I’ve heard numbers even lower than that.

So Safe Routes (funded by the Dept. of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration) aims to get kids back to walking to school by whatever means necessary. If a neighborhood needs sidewalks, they help the neighborhood organize to get ’em. If a school has outlawed walking or biking, they help explain to the district why those things are actually GOOD. They even address, head on, the district’s fears of liability. Meantime, if parents are interested in letting their kids walk, but are scared (of predators, traffic, and worst of all: other parents thinking they’re lazy!), they teach ’em about the “walking school bus.” That’s the cool idea that a parent can take her kid and walk to the next kid’s house and pick her up, and then they all walk to the NEXT kid’s house and pick HIM up, etc., etc.,  so by the time they get to the school, there are a bunch of kids all walking together. Eventually, the kids don’t need the parents anymore: They’ve learned the route, know how to safely cross the street, and this has become their daily routine.

Even the Safe Routes folks agree: It’s weird we have come to time in society when we have to structure what used to be simple and natural — kids walking places. But the way I often think of Free-Range Kids is just that: re-introducing an old-fashioned childhood. When kids have been kept inside so long they no longer know how to organize their own game of leap frog, it’s not bad for a school to hire a recess coach to teach them (and then get out of the way). It’s more important to bring back those skills than it is to blindly pretend that kids will develop them on their own — because they never did. The used to learn games from the older kids in the neighborhood. If there are no older kids outside anymore, or they’re all at travel soccer, then of course the younger ones don’t learn those games out of thin air. Someone needs to re-introduce them.

That’s the same reasoning behind “Take Our Children to the Park…And Leave Them There Day.” Of COURSE I’d like all kids to automatically head out to the park on a sunny Saturday without needing a special holiday to encourage this. But since so many times kids DON’T head to the park, they DON’T get to know the other local kids, and they DON’T know how fun it can be to just kick around a playground with each other. So they stay inside. I proposed a morning where the old-fashioned “meet and have fun” thing would happen, hoping that afterward kids would clamor to do it again.

Safe Routes is on the same sort of mission and its website seems to be loaded with great ideas for how to get the PTA involved, and what to say to skeptics, and how to get the school on your side. And if the local problem is a lack of crossing guards, or whatever, the organization is also game to help walk a district through the red tape it takes to get some grant money to fix the problem. And, just like Take Our Children to the Park Day, Safe Routes sponsors Walk to School Day (coming up in October).

Our shared goal? To re-introduce kids into the world,  sort of the way we’ve done with Peregrine falcons. They may have been bred in captivity, but a future awaits when they can soar. — Lenore

Don’t Meth With Texas

Watch out, kids! Drug dealers are coming to your schoolyard to hook you on Strawberry crystal meth Pop Rocks! That’s the rumor going around Texas that has the PTA there so alarmed that it is warning parents to instruct their kids  not to eat, well, strawberry-flavored meth. Or grape meth. Or peanut butter meth. (Think of the allergies!) If I were the Texas PTA, I’d trademark the phrase “Meth-busters,” just to try to sound a tiny bit cool.

But, of course, I’m not them. I’m someone who read this delightful little piece on Reason.com and realizes what an urban meth, er, myth this whole thing is. Nobody’s peddling strawberry-flavored meth, in part at least because you don’t EAT meth. You snort or smoke it. Moreover, if there had really been a rash of kids all rushed to the hospital in “dire” condition from candy-flavored illegal drugs, don’t you think this would be a bigger story?

What it really shows is that my premise, floated here in October, is true: Halloween has become the template for all parenting. The crazy fears we haul out on that holiday (that our neighbors are actually psychopaths who want to poison children on Halloween) have infiltrated the rest of the year (that our neighbors actually psychopaths who want to poison children on a daily basis).

Be not alarmed, my fellow citizens: There is still a big difference between Strawberry Quik and crystal meth. Although, I guess you could say they’re both pretty addicting.  — Lenore