It seems as though someone has finally stumbled upon a really good idea – get kids outside. Instead of having kids constantly under their parents feet, or being chauffeur-driven around to organised sports and shopping malls get them out into the great outdoors! And all this from America!
Yes, there are risks outside our homes. But there are also risks in raising children under virtual protective house arrest: threats to their independent judgment and value of place, to their ability to feel awe and wonder, to their sense of stewardship for the Earth – and, most immediately, threats to their psychological and physical health. The rapid increase in childhood obesity leads many health-care leaders to worry that the current generation of children may be the first since World War II to die at an earlier age than their parents. Getting kids outdoors more, riding bikes, running, swimming – and, especially, experiencing nature directly – could serve as an antidote to much of what ails the young.
Source: Leave No Child Inside | by Richard Louv | Orion Magazine March-April 2007 [^]
I had a look at some of the place where I “experienced nature directly” in Swindon. In Rodbourne where there is now “Pasture Close” and “Meadow Road” [^] there used to be Meadow and Pasture – and cows, mud and newts. Where we used to slip and slide down the hill on the way home from school at Commonweal between Okus Rd and Hillside Ave(?) [^] looks like it is under houses now as well. It was fun, and probably worth the trouble that I used to get into. But the big question is do kids still do it?
Free Range Kids
About a year ago I posted a link to an article in Orion Magazine about getting children out into the great outdoors. Well I have just stumbled across a whole website devoted to the same topic, FreeRangeKids [^]. This site is written by another American, Lenore Skenazy, a New Yorker no less!
A furore erupted when Lenore wrote an article in The New York Sun about leaving her 9 year-old son in downtown New York to find his own way home in broad daylight:
As Lenore points out that in 2006 115 children were abducted in America, out of a population of 300 million! Now don’t get me wrong, the fact that 115 kids were abducted is still 115 too high; but there is a greater chance of being struck by lightning.
With almost continuous media coverage of these events, like the Madeliene McCann disappearance, this very small possibility remains at the top of everyone’s minds. We take precautions to avoid being struck by lightning, and we should look after out kids – but don’t wrap them in bubble-wrap! There needs to be a point where parental responsibility and independent thinking by the child meet.