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Childhood pastimes are increasingly moving indoors
Childhood pastimes are increasingly moving indoors
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...hildhood_x.htm http://tinyurl.com/a935h By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY Posted 7/12/2005 12:01 AM Updated 7/12/2005 3:12 AM BELLBROOK, Ohio - Being a kid isn't what it used to be. Dakota Howell, 9, went fishing in this town of 7,000 the other day with his mom, dad and little brother. "It's fun," he says, happily reeling in sunfish from Spring Lake during a fishing derby sponsored by Wal-Mart. But, to be honest, he'd rather be doing something else: playing video games. "That was my first choice," he confides. "But mom says they rot your brain." Misty Pollock, his mother, smiles. "When I was a kid, we wanted to be outdoors," she says. "Today, you have to push kids outside." The fundamental nature of American childhood has changed in a single generation. The unstructured outdoor childhood - days of pick-up baseball games, treehouses and "be home for dinner" - has all but vanished. Today, childhood is spent mostly indoors, watching television, playing video games and working the Internet. When children do go outside, it tends to be for scheduled events - soccer camp or a fishing derby - held under the watch of adults. In a typical week, 27% of kids ages 9 to 13 play organized baseball, but only 6% play on their own, a survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found. The shift to an indoor childhood has accelerated in the past decade, with huge declines in spontaneous outdoor activities such as bike riding, swimming and touch football, according to separate studies by the National Sporting Goods Association, a trade group, and American Sports Data, a research firm. Bike riding alone is down 31% since 1995. A child is six times more likely to play a video game on a typical day than to ride a bike, according to surveys by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the CDC. Dakota Howell says his favorite video game -Tony Hawk's Pro Skater- is more fun than actual skateboarding. The change can be seen in children's bodies. In the 1960s, 4% of kids were obese. Today, 16% are overweight, according to the CDC. It can be seen in their brains. Studies indicate that children who spend lots of time outdoors have longer attention spans than kids who watch lots of television and play video games, says Frances Kuo, director of the Human-Environment Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "New research indicates that our intuition is right: Kids are spending way too much time with media and not enough time outside," Kuo says. The lure of television and video games isn't the only thing keeping kids indoors. Parents are more afraid of letting kids roam in a world of heavy traffic and reports of pedophiles and missing children. A 41% decline in the birth rate since 1960 means smaller packs of kids roam neighborhoods. Air-conditioning means kids don't need the local pool or swimming hole to cool off. "Boundaries for kids used to be measured by blocks or miles. Now, the boundary for most kids is the front yard. A lot of kids are under house arrest," says Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, a book about how children have lost touch with nature. He says many parents fear the outdoors, whether it's letting a kid climb a tree or hike alone in the woods. "Parents think their kids are safer in front of the Xbox in the next room." Home alone Consider Jared Timmons and Cole Hillsamer, a pair of athletic 11-year-old friends from Beaver Creek, Ohio. The boys live in neighborhoods separated by a busy street neither is allowed to cross in their 38,000-resident town outside of Dayton. During the school year, both boys got home about 2 p.m. and spent a couple hours alone. Cole flopped on his bed, watched MTV or the Dukes ofHazzard. Jared sat 2 miles away instant messaging friends and sometimes stepping outside to shoot baskets by himself. The buddies were outdoors together at this month's fishing derby. Cole's mother, Janet Begley, drove them to the event and sat in a beach chair behind the boys reading Hidden Prey, a murder mystery. She says she would never let her son play in the woods without an adult. She won't even let him go alone to the park down the street. "Parks are where pedophiles go," she says. The mother pauses for a moment to recall her tomboy childhood. She rode her bike all over town. She played outdoors freely - climbing trees, playing tag and kick the can. "Life for kids isn't what it used to be," she says. Annabel North, 9, a bubbly Catholic school student, is fishing a few feet away. Last night, she had a sleepover at a friend's house and had a grand time trying to make grape jelly from juice and milk. She stayed up whispering until midnight discussing whether the Loch Ness monster is real. But much of her time, she says, is spent by herself. "When I'm happy, I go outdoors. When I'm sad, I watch TV," she says. Some days, Annabel says, she watches television from the moment she wakes up until the moment she goes to bed. Is that boring? "No, it's not boring at all!" she exclaims, surprised by the silly question. "It's great. I don't miss anything." Multimedia lives of children In the 1960s, television broadcast 27 hours of children's programming a week, much of it shown simultaneously on Saturday morning. Today, there are 14 television networks aimed at children, and the most popular show with children, American Idol, isn't on any of them. Children ages 8 to 10 spend an average of 6 hours a day watching television, playing video games and using computers, according to the Kaiser study. And that's during the school year. No study has been done on vacation habits, but TV ratings show kids watch more during the summer. Childhood's outdoor pastimes are declining fast and the rate has accelerated in the past decade, especially the past five years, according to the National Sporting Goods Association (NSGA) annual survey of physical activity. Since 1995, the portion of children ages 7 to 11 who swim, fish or play touch football has declined by about a third. Canoeing and water skiing are down by similar amounts. The relationship between kids and their bikes is especially telling. In 1995, 68% of children ages 7 to 11 rode a bike at least six times a year. Last year, only 47% did. The sales of children's bikes fell from 12.4 million in 2000 to 9.8 million in 2004, a 21% decline, according to Bicycle Industry and Retailer News,an industry magazine. "Bikes used to be empowering for children," says Marc Sani, publisher of the magazine. "My parents didn't care where I went as long as I was home for supper. Now, parents are afraid to let kids out of their sight." Many kids have substituted skateboards and scooters to get around. But skateboards and scooters travel short distances and their use peaked in 2001 and 2002 respectively, according to the NSGA survey. Children today tend to get outdoor exercise by appointment. Soccer participation has been unchanged in the past decade - about 28% of kids age 7 to 11 play the sport. Soccer leagues and soccer camps are in full bloom this summer, although non-organized soccer games are uncommon. Organized outdoor activities have kept kids moving. They are declining but much more slowly that unstructured outdoor play. Little League participation has fallen to 2.1 million children, down 14% from its peak in 1997. But overall baseball playing - pick-up games, catch, pickle - has declined nearly twice as fast, the NSGA surveys show. "As a kid, I'd throw my glove on a bike and pedal 2 or 3 miles to the ball field for a pick-up game," says Little League spokesman Chris Downs, 33, in Williamsport, Pa. "That doesn't appeal to kids as much today. They have many other choices - and not just video games." In generations past, children's play tended to be open-ended, following whatever game or adventure a child's imagination could generate. Children and parents now prefer structured entertainment, whether it's a video game or a day at the pool. Spring Valley Pool in Granville, Ohio, closed this year after 70 years. "Kids expect entertainment at a pool, not just pleasure or friendship," says Chip Gordon, whose family owned the pool. "Our 12-foot high dive couldn't compete with the jazzy stuff kids expect." Kids specialize Mike Morris, 20, a pole-vaulter at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind., says the introduction of Nintendo 64 in 1996 was a seminal event in his generation's childhood. It introduced 3-D graphics, the joystick and the ability to play "shoot 'em up" games that allowed competing against friends. Almost overnight, play in his neighborhood shifted from outdoors to indoors. Some kids never really came back out, he says. Even those who did had their habits changed. Morris often works out three hours a day at the gym, then returns to his dorm to play the Halo combat game against 20 fellow students sitting in their own dorm rooms nearby. "My college memories are more likely to be a great move I put on to kill someone in Halo than a great move in pick-up basketball," he says. "It's kind of sad in a way." Tracey Martin, 40, head of parks and recreation in Greenville, Ohio, says his athletic 14-year-old son spends a typical summer week playing basketball all day at basketball camp and playing soccer at night. But when his son is home, the boy spends his free time using computer chat rooms and playing cards over the Internet. "The funny thing is, I never see him play cards with his friends," his father says. Many parents express dismay over the lives their children lead, but they aren't sure what to do. Darrell Mueller, 54, runs the parks and recreation programs in North Platte, Neb. His childhood was spent outdoors playing ball, riding his bike and building forts. Even today, he hates being inside. His children are the opposite. They prefer being driven to school, which is just two houses away. His 11-year-old daughter, Ivy, spends hours instant messaging her friend across the street. He asks why she doesn't just go over and play with her friend. "This is more fun," his daughter explains. Mueller's 16-year-old son, Taylor, spends nearly every waking hour in his room, playing the Warcraft fantasy game on the Internet with people from around the world. "I call him the caveman because he never leaves his room," Mueller says. "He comes out now and then for dinner, but he can't eat with us. He has to get back to his game." His son recently burst out of his room excited. His guild, or team, had earned a top ranking in Warcraft. The father didn't know what to say: Should he congratulate his son on his success or worry about what it meant? Mueller pulls his son out of his room three times a week - twice for a summer basketball league and on Sunday to mow the grass at the boy's grandfather's house. "In my day, we tried to get out of the house any way we could," Mueller says. "Now, you can't get kids outdoors." In Bellbrook, the fishing derby ends at noon. Dakota Howell and his brother John, 7, are ready to head home from Spring Lake. Dakota declares he wants to be an archaeologist because he loves getting his fingers dirty. John, carrying fishing rods, looks like a child in a Norman Rockwell painting. He has a big smile on his face. "Now," he says, "we're going home to play video games." |
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Childhood pastimes are increasingly moving indoors
Fred Goodwin, CMA wrote:
Childhood pastimes are increasingly moving indoors http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...hildhood_x.htm http://tinyurl.com/a935h By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY Posted 7/12/2005 12:01 AM Updated 7/12/2005 3:12 AM BELLBROOK, Ohio - Being a kid isn't what it used to be. Dakota Howell, 9, went fishing in this town of 7,000 the other day with his mom, dad and little brother. "It's fun," he says, happily reeling in sunfish from Spring Lake during a fishing derby sponsored by Wal-Mart. But, to be honest, he'd rather be doing something else: playing video games. "That was my first choice," he confides. "But mom says they rot your brain." More like the lack of activity rots the body of a child who should be outside running, jumping, climbing trees, or whatever other physical activity kids used to do before video games. Misty Pollock, his mother, smiles. "When I was a kid, we wanted to be outdoors," she says. "Today, you have to push kids outside." The fundamental nature of American childhood has changed in a single generation. The unstructured outdoor childhood - days of pick-up baseball games, treehouses and "be home for dinner" - has all but vanished. Solution here is a problem. You could forgo cable television and only buy video games that are educational (and very rare), then give them their own Internet connection (dial up) while you hide your own high speed connected computer from them. Today, childhood is spent mostly indoors, watching television, playing video games and working the Internet. When children do go outside, it tends to be for scheduled events - soccer camp or a fishing derby - held under the watch of adults. In a typical week, 27% of kids ages 9 to 13 play organized baseball, but only 6% play on their own, a survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found. That is a drastic change from my childhood in the 50's, where the after school and weekend activities almost always involved going to the park for a softball game. It was be there or be square and all the kids in the neighborhood were usually there so the parents knew where to find them. The shift to an indoor childhood has accelerated in the past decade, with huge declines in spontaneous outdoor activities such as bike riding, swimming and touch football, according to separate studies by the National Sporting Goods Association, a trade group, and American Sports Data, a research firm. Bike riding alone is down 31% since 1995. A child is six times more likely to play a video game on a typical day than to ride a bike, according to surveys by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the CDC. Dakota Howell says his favorite video game -Tony Hawk's Pro Skater- is more fun than actual skateboarding. Now that is pushing the limit, when a video game is more fun than the real thing. A friend of mine, also in his 50's, likes to play a motorcycle racing game, but given a good day, both he and I will turn off the computer and get out the real motorcycles. The change can be seen in children's bodies. In the 1960s, 4% of kids were obese. In the 50's and early 60's I flat out can't remember any fat kids, and even the token 'fat' red headed kid was barely overweight, certainly not 'Obese'. Today, 16% are overweight, according to the CDC. It can be seen in their brains. Studies indicate that children who spend lots of time outdoors have longer attention spans than kids who watch lots of television and play video games, says Frances Kuo, director of the Human-Environment Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I may have to disagree with that number. In my neighborhood about 50% of the kids are noticeably overweight, some just with pot bellys, but still overweight for an active kid. "New research indicates that our intuition is right: Kids are spending way too much time with media and not enough time outside," Kuo says. The lure of television and video games isn't the only thing keeping kids indoors. Parents are more afraid of letting kids roam in a world of heavy traffic and reports of pedophiles and missing children. A 41% decline in the birth rate since 1960 means smaller packs of kids roam neighborhoods. Air-conditioning means kids don't need the local pool or swimming hole to cool off. Part of that may be over reporting of pedophiles by the news and over prosecution of some adults who merely want to give a child a hug. We have a local pool but at $2.00 a kid the parents often don't want to give up the money. "Boundaries for kids used to be measured by blocks or miles. Now, the boundary for most kids is the front yard. A lot of kids are under house arrest," says Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, a book about how children have lost touch with nature. That is pretty much the case where I live since there seems to be a registered sex offender every other block, and kids with souped up 4 cylinder cars speeding in residential zones. He says many parents fear the outdoors, whether it's letting a kid climb a tree or hike alone in the woods. "Parents think their kids are safer in front of the Xbox in the next room." That is sadly true. I had to take my grandchildren out and teach them how to climb trees like normal kids since the only climbable tree was too far (2 blocks). The only time they get to go farther is when grandpa, me, takes them on long walks to hunt lizards or something, or when I can round up enough bikes to take them on a ride. None of the parents will do this with their own kids so I have become the default grandfather, something I never expected to happen. I take the kids out on Saturday or Sunday while the parents sit and watch television, usually with a beer in hand. Something is definitely wrong with our society. Home alone Consider Jared Timmons and Cole Hillsamer, a pair of athletic 11-year-old friends from Beaver Creek, Ohio. The boys live in neighborhoods separated by a busy street neither is allowed to cross in their 38,000-resident town outside of Dayton. During the school year, both boys got home about 2 p.m. and spent a couple hours alone. Cole flopped on his bed, watched MTV or the Dukes ofHazzard. Jared sat 2 miles away instant messaging friends and sometimes stepping outside to shoot baskets by himself. The buddies were outdoors together at this month's fishing derby. Cole's mother, Janet Begley, drove them to the event and sat in a beach chair behind the boys reading Hidden Prey, a murder mystery. She says she would never let her son play in the woods without an adult. She won't even let him go alone to the park down the street. "Parks are where pedophiles go," she says. There aren't that many true pedophiles but the news would have you think there is one behind every bush. Besides that if you let 2 or 3 11 year old boys go together, chances are very good they could beat the tar out of a would be attacker, even if they had to pick up rocks or sticks to do it. The mother pauses for a moment to recall her tomboy childhood. She rode her bike all over town. She played outdoors freely - climbing trees, playing tag and kick the can. "Life for kids isn't what it used to be," she says. Annabel North, 9, a bubbly Catholic school student, is fishing a few feet away. Last night, she had a sleepover at a friend's house and had a grand time trying to make grape jelly from juice and milk. She stayed up whispering until midnight discussing whether the Loch Ness monster is real. You speak too much of fishing, which while an outdoor activity, is not really exercise. It is more of a relaxing sport where you wait for a fish to disturb you. But much of her time, she says, is spent by herself. "When I'm happy, I go outdoors. When I'm sad, I watch TV," she says. Some days, Annabel says, she watches television from the moment she wakes up until the moment she goes to bed. Is that boring? "No, it's not boring at all!" she exclaims, surprised by the silly question. "It's great. I don't miss anything." OK, that is not healthy at all. She misses everything in the real world. Multimedia lives of children In the 1960s, television broadcast 27 hours of children's programming a week, much of it shown simultaneously on Saturday morning. Today, there are 14 television networks aimed at children, and the most popular show with children, American Idol, isn't on any of them. I remember that, more from the 50's when Saturday morning was cartoon morning, then in the afternoon I went to the movie theater with some friends to watch the Saturday afternoon kids cartoon matinée. Children ages 8 to 10 spend an average of 6 hours a day watching television, playing video games and using computers, according to the Kaiser study. And that's during the school year. No study has been done on vacation habits, but TV ratings show kids watch more during the summer. What happened to homework? Childhood's outdoor pastimes are declining fast and the rate has accelerated in the past decade, especially the past five years, according to the National Sporting Goods Association (NSGA) annual survey of physical activity. A lot of that can be blamed on real estate developers who will build 1000 houses and no park. In the 50's there were parks every half mile or so but now the only parks seem to be the ones that were already there. I live about a half mile from a 1,500 house real estate development and after 3 years the 'Proposed' park is barely started, the 'Proposed' school is still a vacant field, and to add insult to injury they cut down 3 old growth 100 year old trees just to put 3 more houses in. Since 1995, the portion of children ages 7 to 11 who swim, fish or play touch football has declined by about a third. Canoeing and water skiing are down by similar amounts. The relationship between kids and their bikes is especially telling. In 1995, 68% of children ages 7 to 11 rode a bike at least six times a year. Last year, only 47% did. In 1960 I could not ride my bike without meeting a friend on a bike and it seemed like kids were out everywhere. Now I look outside and wonder where all the kids went. The sales of children's bikes fell from 12.4 million in 2000 to 9.8 million in 2004, a 21% decline, according to Bicycle Industry and Retailer News,an industry magazine. "Bikes used to be empowering for children," says Marc Sani, publisher of the magazine. "My parents didn't care where I went as long as I was home for supper. Now, parents are afraid to let kids out of their sight." Many kids have substituted skateboards and scooters to get around. But skateboards and scooters travel short distances and their use peaked in 2001 and 2002 respectively, according to the NSGA survey. Children today tend to get outdoor exercise by appointment. Soccer participation has been unchanged in the past decade - about 28% of kids age 7 to 11 play the sport. Soccer leagues and soccer camps are in full bloom this summer, although non-organized soccer games are uncommon. Organized outdoor activities have kept kids moving. They are declining but much more slowly that unstructured outdoor play. Little League participation has fallen to 2.1 million children, down 14% from its peak in 1997. But overall baseball playing - pick-up games, catch, pickle - has declined nearly twice as fast, the NSGA surveys show. Much of that decline is probably because the parents themselves don't want to be stuck with transportation duty on a regular basis. One child is enough to ferry around, and if you have 3 or more it can be a real drain, both financially and on your time as bus driver. "As a kid, I'd throw my glove on a bike and pedal 2 or 3 miles to the ball field for a pick-up game," says Little League spokesman Chris Downs, 33, in Williamsport, Pa. "That doesn't appeal to kids as much today. They have many other choices - and not just video games." In generations past, children's play tended to be open-ended, following whatever game or adventure a child's imagination could generate. Children and parents now prefer structured entertainment, whether it's a video game or a day at the pool. Spring Valley Pool in Granville, Ohio, closed this year after 70 years. "Kids expect entertainment at a pool, not just pleasure or friendship," says Chip Gordon, whose family owned the pool. "Our 12-foot high dive couldn't compete with the jazzy stuff kids expect." That must be some really spoiled kids. Around here they are glad to go to the pool and get wet and meet friends they might not otherwise see. Kids specialize Mike Morris, 20, a pole-vaulter at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind., says the introduction of Nintendo 64 in 1996 was a seminal event in his generation's childhood. It introduced 3-D graphics, the joystick and the ability to play "shoot 'em up" games that allowed competing against friends. Almost overnight, play in his neighborhood shifted from outdoors to indoors. Some kids never really came back out, he says. Even those who did had their habits changed. Morris often works out three hours a day at the gym, then returns to his dorm to play the Halo combat game against 20 fellow students sitting in their own dorm rooms nearby. "My college memories are more likely to be a great move I put on to kill someone in Halo than a great move in pick-up basketball," he says. "It's kind of sad in a way." That would be a really sorry situation if in later years that is all he had to brag about. Tracey Martin, 40, head of parks and recreation in Greenville, Ohio, says his athletic 14-year-old son spends a typical summer week playing basketball all day at basketball camp and playing soccer at night. But when his son is home, the boy spends his free time using computer chat rooms and playing cards over the Internet. "The funny thing is, I never see him play cards with his friends," his father says. Many parents express dismay over the lives their children lead, but they aren't sure what to do. Darrell Mueller, 54, runs the parks and recreation programs in North Platte, Neb. His childhood was spent outdoors playing ball, riding his bike and building forts. Even today, he hates being inside. Building forts was a big deal for me in the 50's. My claim to fame there is that the very first McDonald's golden arches was built right where my fort was in Des Plaines Illinois. His children are the opposite. They prefer being driven to school, which is just two houses away. That is a case where they would get tossed out the front door and told not to be seen again until they walked back from school. Never, no way, would I fire up the car, even if there was 3 feet of snow on the ground. His 11-year-old daughter, Ivy, spends hours instant messaging her friend across the street. He asks why she doesn't just go over and play with her friend. "This is more fun," his daughter explains. Texting has gotten way out of hand. My daughter will text her mother from her bedroom rather than get out of bed or away from her computer and walk 2 rooms to talk to her mother. Mueller's 16-year-old son, Taylor, spends nearly every waking hour in his room, playing the Warcraft fantasy game on the Internet with people from around the world. "I call him the caveman because he never leaves his room," Mueller says. "He comes out now and then for dinner, but he can't eat with us. He has to get back to his game." His son recently burst out of his room excited. His guild, or team, had earned a top ranking in Warcraft. The father didn't know what to say: Should he congratulate his son on his success or worry about what it meant? Mueller pulls his son out of his room three times a week - twice for a summer basketball league and on Sunday to mow the grass at the boy's grandfather's house. "In my day, we tried to get out of the house any way we could," Mueller says. "Now, you can't get kids outdoors." The obvious solution would be to disconnect his Internet and tell him that if he earns enough money to pay for it he can have it back. That way he would have to get a paper route (Do they still exist?), mow lawns, or something to make money from the neighbors and not dad's wallet. In Bellbrook, the fishing derby ends at noon. Dakota Howell and his brother John, 7, are ready to head home from Spring Lake. Dakota declares he wants to be an archaeologist because he loves getting his fingers dirty. John, carrying fishing rods, looks like a child in a Norman Rockwell painting. He has a big smile on his face. "Now," he says, "we're going home to play video games." Sad ending to a day started out well, but again, fishing? Bill Baka, similarly concerned parent / grandparent. Will the next poster please clip this down? |
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Childhood pastimes are increasingly moving indoors
On 3 Jul 2006, "Fred Goodwin, CMA" wrote:
Childhood pastimes are increasingly moving indoors http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...hildhood_x.htm The fundamental nature of American childhood has changed in a single generation. The unstructured outdoor childhood - days of pick-up baseball games, treehouses and "be home for dinner" - has all but vanished. So true. The above is what I did when I was growing up. Bike riding alone is down 31% since 1995. Yes. When I was in elementary school we either rode our bikes to school, or we spent 10 minutes walking. And we went home for lunch. Now my parents tell me there are buses! And the large bike shed at the school is gone. I blame the parents for the buses. Don www.donwiss.com (e-mail link at home page bottom). |
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Childhood pastimes are increasingly moving indoors
On Mon, 03 Jul 2006 21:59:55 GMT, Bill wrote:
Building forts was a big deal for me in the 50's. My claim to fame there is that the very first McDonald's golden arches was built right where my fort was in Des Plaines Illinois. I still like my friend's mother's claim to fame. It was her desk at the Democratic National Committee that the Watergate burglar tried to hide under. Don www.donwiss.com (e-mail link at home page bottom). |
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Childhood pastimes are increasingly moving indoors
"Don Wiss" wrote in message ... Yes. When I was in elementary school we either rode our bikes to school, or we spent 10 minutes walking. And we went home for lunch. Now my parents tell me there are buses! And the large bike shed at the school is gone. I was pleased to notice that while passing a local public school the rather considerable expanse of bike rack was full and even the chainlink fence was doing double duty as additional lock space. |
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Childhood pastimes are increasingly moving indoors
In article ,
Don Wiss wrote: On 3 Jul 2006, "Fred Goodwin, CMA" wrote: Childhood pastimes are increasingly moving indoors http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...hildhood_x.htm The fundamental nature of American childhood has changed in a single generation. The unstructured outdoor childhood - days of pick-up baseball games, treehouses and "be home for dinner" - has all but vanished. So true. The above is what I did when I was growing up. Bike riding alone is down 31% since 1995. Yes. When I was in elementary school we either rode our bikes to school, or we spent 10 minutes walking. And we went home for lunch. Now my parents tell me there are buses! And the large bike shed at the school is gone. I blame the parents for the buses. I wish it were that simple. You also have to blame urban planners: in many areas, there are no sidewalks, no safe way to walk to school -- and certainly the roads are not being built safely for bicycles to share the road with cars. I would have been happy to have my kids walk to school, or take their bikes. However, we seldom lived where it was possible. It also becomes almost a spiraling thing: as fewer kids walk to school, they pull the crossing guards in, so there are only safe corners RIGHT next to the school. And as fewer people walk, there is less pressure for sidewalks to be built and maintained, so fewer people walk, so.... Now, I can't claim to have walked to school -- but I grew up in the country, where everyone rode yellow school buses because we lived WAY to far away to ride or walk. (I was 10 miles from my elementary school, for example.) But I had assumed that one advantage of living in an urban area would be that my kids could walk to school, and have friends close enough to go outside to play and find them. However, there were few kids hanging out outside after school, so to keep them occupied I had to have them in more organized activities -- which meant there were still fewer kids hanging out at the local park. It is frustrating -- while I'd have loved for my kids to have hung out and played pick up games at the local park, since there weren't other kids doing that, I had to arrange for more structured things, or have them just in the house. Neither the problem nor the solution is simple. -- Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care |
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Childhood pastimes are increasingly moving indoors
dragonlady wrote:
.... You also have to blame urban planners: in many areas, there are no sidewalks, no safe way to walk to school -- and certainly the roads are not being built safely for bicycles to share the road with cars. .... This urban planner rides a bike. Keep in mind that many of these new communities -- the ones lacking sidewalks and SRTS --are in rural areas and townships, built by developers who aren't going to pay for sidewalks. And the people moving there are leaving established cities --with vital downtowns, commercial districts, and sidewalks -- because of paranoia like the "pedophiles in parks" comment. It would be unethical of a planner to specify sidewalks in a subdivision with 1-acre lots and long frontages. Who's gonna pay for it? And if two blocks is "too far" to walk to go climb a tree, who's gonna walk on them? HTH --Karen D. from my front porch that overlooks a sidewalk, a mile from downtown Grand Rapids, Mich. |
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Childhood pastimes are increasingly moving indoors
Fred Goodwin, CMA wrote: Childhood pastimes are increasingly moving indoors huge snip Well Fred if it makes you feel better, my boys cycle to school. They come home for lunch and they cycle everywhere they want to go, which is a lot of places. There is no TV, no gameboy. There is high speed internet for homework assignments. We're not Luddites. The boys are not fat and they are not unhappy. Getting a kid on a bicycle for 40 miles a week is a big deal. It is well worth the effort. But it means you have to choose where to live. It means the suburbs are out. And it means you have to pay more. Bike friendly towns and cities are not cheap. |
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Childhood pastimes are increasingly moving indoors
In article .com,
"Veloise" wrote: dragonlady wrote: ... You also have to blame urban planners: in many areas, there are no sidewalks, no safe way to walk to school -- and certainly the roads are not being built safely for bicycles to share the road with cars. ... This urban planner rides a bike. Keep in mind that many of these new communities -- the ones lacking sidewalks and SRTS --are in rural areas and townships, built by developers who aren't going to pay for sidewalks. And the people moving there are leaving established cities --with vital downtowns, commercial districts, and sidewalks -- because of paranoia like the "pedophiles in parks" comment. It would be unethical of a planner to specify sidewalks in a subdivision with 1-acre lots and long frontages. Who's gonna pay for it? And if two blocks is "too far" to walk to go climb a tree, who's gonna walk on them? Hmmm -- I perhaps should have been more sensitive in how I phrased that: I know there are very good urban planners who work to build communities that are accessible. And I also understand that urban planners must work within the reality they are handed, not the one they might always prefer. Perhaps I should have specified that the blame isn't just on the parents, but on communities that have been built to NOT be bike/pedestrian friendly -- by whomever, for whatever reason. -- Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care |
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