Quote:
Originally Posted by Cage
Regarding kids playing outside. Here are my observations as a Dad to a very active four year old.
- One factor not mentioned in the above discussion is the greater diversity of household types than was present 20-40 years ago. When I grew up the street with 80 houses had at least 30 houses with Kids. Today's neighbourhoods have higher percentage of childless houses. Consequently it harder for kids to meet other kids in the neighbourhood.
- Structured activities for some kids has taken on whole new expanded realm. Parents are moulding their progeny into little superstars at a very young age(3-5 years). For some kids activity has shifted from the playground and to dance studio, hockey rink, etc.
- Greater schooling choices have segregated our communities. When I was growing up there was basically two schooling choices, public or separate. The public had one more option, french immersion at a few select schools. Today's schooling choices have afore mentioned three plus spanish immersion, Charter schools, special needs schools, etc. With all the schooling choices, kids within the same community are sent to different schooling locations are consequently do not interact with their neighbours.
- Greater use of school bussing options has resulted in kids whose inner circle of friends are located several communities apart. If the kids want to meet outside of school, their parents must drive them due to distance involved.
- Increase housing density has reduced the opportunity for kids to play in their own backyard. When I was growing up my Dad built a ice rink in our back yard. The house lot was 60 feet wide. Today my back yard is just shy of 40 feet wide. I would be hard pressed to build an adequate rink that allowed for decent ice surface.
- An unintended consequence of housing density increase. I don't have a sidewalk on my side of the street. When I played outdoors, my Mom took comfort that kids used the sidewalks and cars used the road. Today my wife freaks out that my kid could get run over due at innocent mistake. Bluntly the sidewalk introduced buffer zone for my childhood that my daughter does not have available.
- When I grew up, everyone drove slower in our neighbourhood because nearly everyone had kids. The houses that did not have children living in the home had grandkids that would stop by constantly. I can remember 1 out of 80 houses was rented by university students and there were no DINK households. Today I have at least 5 houses rented to university aged people, and 10 more houses owned by DINKs or SINKs. Vehicles go faster when driven by individuals without connection to young children, MHO based on observation from my front yard.
WRT technology. Yes my daughter plays with iPad and watches TV, however she also gets double the recommended time of activity, a little over 2 hours active play per day. She does parks 4-5 times per week plus gymnastics and other activities. I believe the discussions of too much TV and too little activity need to be separated.
Finally the medical, fitness, and child rearing communities need to come clean with their double speak. There is too great a focus on learning game theories rather than getting kids active. For example written exams for gym class. Additionally, unstructured play is essentially forcing young kids to sort out disagreements for themselves. Yes the younger ones are going to get short end of the stick, but some day the younger ones will be the older ones and get to be leader.
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yes, yes, and hell yes. Taking my street (in a new neighborhood) as an example:
1. of roughly 100 houses on the street I would put the count of homes with children school age or younger at about 20-30 tops.
2. For whatever reason parents today seem to think they need to put their kids in some kind of structured activity at all time. And the more it costs and the more time it takes the better (apparently).
3. There are exactly 8 kids on my street with kids my age (7 homes in total since two of those kids are mine). They go to 7 different schools. In other words not a single kid goes to the same school as a kid from another house. All your school friends live in different communities, never mind living on another street. My kids have school friends who live in different quadrants of the city.
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