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."

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?

wrote:
Fred Goodwin, CMA wrote:
Childhood pastimes are increasingly moving indoors

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...hildhood_x.htm
http://tinyurl.com/a935h
...snip...

Thanks for posting that, Fred. But it was ***very*** depressing. Make
no wonder so many kids seem so screwed up today. I hate to imagine
what things will be like in 30 years when I'm old and feeble and
dependent upon others.

Does anyone else think that it's time we started feeding pedophiles to
the sharks? Or would that be cruel and unusual punishment to the
sharks?

Jeff

Are there really that many pedophiles? If there were, why weren't we all
victims in our childhoods? Could I be branded a pedophile because
someone else's kid (girl) runs up and gives me a hug? I used to have my
own posse of girls 7 to 14 that I took for rides when I took my own
grandchildren out. Even though the bicycling was slow it was good times
for the kids and for me to see all those smiling faces all trying to
talk at the same time. Now that most of them have moved when I do see
them, like at my grandson's 8th grade graduation, they tell me they miss
the 'good old days' and that they spend a lot more time indoors without
an adult to take them out and watch over them. What got the most
attention at the graduation was the fact that I had about ten young
girls run up and hug on me, and I could see some adults looking like "He
can't possibly have that many all blond grandchildren.". Still, it was a
symbiotic thing since I got them out and they got me out more often.
It drove my wife nuts to have the girls come to the door and ask if
Grandpa could come out and play, but I always made time to do something
with them where I might be able to teach them about things, even like
how to walk an be aware of traffic. I'm 57 but the kids won't let me act
my age and get old.
Bill Baka

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).

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).

"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.

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

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.

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.

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