Have Our Children Forgotten How to Play Outdoors?

AlbertMohler.com ^ | July 16, 2012 | Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr

[I am Richard Brandon]

"The predators have more rights.

Let's change that. How about a 'One strike and you're out' policy? First offence and they are offered a choice of:

Chemical 'castration' (must not forget women offenders) and incarceration for life.
Assisted suicide.
Repatriation to their birth country.

Let's clear the decks and make our country safe for children again.

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

Later.

[Buckeye McFrog]

I spent the teenage years of my youngest child PHYSICALLY EVICTING her from Playstation and the Internet, and forcing her to go outside for some exercise and fresh air.

Could not relate for at that age I lived outdoors playing ball, going swimming and riding bikes. At least until I turned 16 and got a part-time job.

[T-Bird45]

Disputes were settled on the spot. The learning process was swift.

Most usual solution if the offended party owned the ball or bat: "I'll just take my stuff and go home!" It was a great laboratory of learning how to get along or to save up your allowance so one guy was not the only one with the ball and bat.

A great article that has another message for those who care to think about it. Given the fears parents have about allowing kids the freedom of earlier generations for individual or child-led exploration, it provides further clarity for why the Boy Scouts are so adamant about "Safe Scouting" and keeping those who would prey on the innocent away. Organized activities must ensure a high level of safety in order for boys to get these formative experiences.

[Claud]

Kids should NOT be allowed outdoors.

My daughter is about to turn 3. She ate all my strawberries last year—when they were still green. She has since learned to tell ripe from not ripe. So this year, she makes a beeline for the cherry tomatoes and, morning, noon, or night, picks the ripe ones and pops them in her mouth for fresh eating. Raspberries...blueberries...same thing. Daddy gets nothing!

She is worse than a groundhog. So for heaven’s sake, keep your kids indoors! ;)

Seriously though, this article makes good points. I hate what I am becoming having to work on the computer all the time and then even using it to relax, when we could be doing fun stuff outdoors. If we intend to prevent our kids from turning into tech junkies like us, we could stand to get off the things more ourselves.

[9YearLurker]

The fewer deranged people out there, the less the chance to convince Americans to give up their constitutional rights of self-defense.

[redangus]

Or the basketball games where you got to play if your were one of the first ten to make a foul shot and then one of the first five to make the shot to take on the winners. Or the football games where you made up whatever rules were necessary to make the game playable with 5 or 6 players. Anyone else remember automatic pass numbers or was that a uniquely southern Indiana thing?

[ilovesarah2012]

Our big tree in our back yard was a pirate ship, rocks were eggs we gathered on our farm, our picnic table was a car. We found scraps of wood and built boats that we floated in the lake. We chased sheep on our neighbor’s farm and our neighbor chased us. We walked to the movies on Saturday mornings. We played football, baseball, basketball, dodge ball. We played in mud puddles and had tomato fights. We had lots of boys in our neighborhood so I played with them and did what they did. We built forts in the woods and got up early on rubbish day to find treasures. We didn’t watch much TV.

I was watching The Sandlot with my 25 yr old daughter recently and she was saying how she wished she lived during that time. Kids today don’t really know how to be kids.

[refermech]

Godzilla?

[AUJenn]

Great post. It’s a topic my husband and I talk about frequently. I have two babies, so they are too young to play outside without my supervision. But I rarely see children out and about the way we used to be. In the mid-80s, my sister and I were always outside; playing with neighborhood kids, riding bikes, hide-and-go-seek, going on long walks. In fact, my mom made us leave the house everyday and told us to be home for lunch and dinner.

I will say, though, safety is a concern. My in-laws live a mile from us and I cannot honestly say that I would allow my kids to walk to their house when old enough. There are just too many bizarre predators lurking around. Simply check your home address on one of the sex offender websites; incredible how many registered ones are out there. Who knows how many un-registered ones.

What really drives me nuts now is watching families at restaurants ignoring each other, staring at their phones, playing games on their ipads, playing on facebook, etc. No one speaks to each other or even looks at one another. No conversations, no real interaction. Why do parents allow children to do this? What kind of zombie-like generation is this going to be?

[rarestia]

The latter is a natural concern given all the creeps and weirdos out there, thanks to the left and its constituencies.

Don't allow yourself or your children to fall victim to this mindset! I don't have kids yet, but my wife and I are active GeoCachers. This hide-and-seek sort of treasure-hunting game has taken us to places we never knew existed; parks that have fallen into disrepair; parts of the coastal mangrove forests that have been untouched for decades or more; and areas long hidden from the "cultured" among society.

It has the added bonus of requiring the use of handheld GPS devices, and I've often come upon GXers with their kids leading the charge to a cache. They take their iPhones or handheld GPS devices and go running headlong into spider-web-spanned forest paths or heavily-root-laden walks in search of a cleverly-hidden cache.

I agree wholeheartedly with the assessments in this article, but all is not lost. Families can participate in outdoor activities together if safety is an issue. I've never GXed without a sidearm, and that's something that no one needs to know but you. To boot, when you do come across a magical place that's seemingly untouched by suburban sprawl, there's nothing better, now as an adult, than sitting down in the overgrown grasses and looking to the skies remembering what it was like to be a kid. I hope that those very same memories can be embedded in my child's mind when they're born.

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

Can't do what you never were taught

Public School is a conditioning process for laziness

Parents work so much to keep their heads above water they have no time for children

It's less taxing to watch action and adventure on TV with a DVD than it is to go climb a tree or explore the woods

Child Predators are everywhere and the law protects them more than it does the children

with the advent of Monsanto Bio crops children are more susceptible to allergies than ever before

So why go outside ? The shame of it is there are so many things to discover on your own outside it does not take a great amount of perspicacity to realize children have very much to learn by stepping out the front door and having many great adventures of their own ...

Do parents have time to show outside adventures to their kids ? I'm afraid in this economy the answer is NOT ENOUGH TIME vacationing and week ends are not time enough but i suppose parents can change or have they been conditioned too by the same public schools and Government Largess that has placed children on the back burner? ...

[Iron Munro]

"Where have you been all day!"

"Out."

"What have you been doing?"

"Nothing."

"Well get in there and wash those dirty hands!"

[DigitalVideoDude]

My son gets the outdoor experience through the Boy Scout Troop. They do a lot of backpacking and camping.

My daughter, not so much.

[bigtoona]

If anyone has some favorite game they remember from childhood, please post it along with how to play. I was looking around on the net and every article only mentions duck duck goose, hide and seek and other obvious games. I like the more creative games like the baseball rotation someone mentioned.

My kids are 10 and under and like to play outside but with the heat I have been having trouble getting them to go out lately.

Here is a game they often play after dark
http://www.ehow.com/how_2044148_play-ghost-graveyard.html

[9YearLurker]

First I’d heard of ‘Planned-opolis’—thanks!

[Fractal Trader]

There is undeveloped land behind the house where I grew up. I cannot count all the ways that the exploration of this land enriched me. Here’s a few:

1) Observed the full growth cycle of frogs, including polliwogs in the stagnant ponds

2) Found all sorts of berries, including my favorite: black caps

3) Spent countless hours flying kites — why doesn’t anyone fly kites any more?

etc..

[stormer]

My 2 cents. I've done a range of research projects involving ecological issues: population studies, predator/prey relationships, food webs and guilds, that sort of thing. I've spent months on end living in tents in some pretty remote places. That said, I guess some folks think I've got something to share, so I get tasked with helping students hone their field-craft - most of them aren't biology types like me, but grad students (education, policy, psych, etc) looking to expand their knowledge base in an interdisciplinary environment, and inadvertently giving me an opportunity to observe them responding to nature. OK - now to my point - the problem isn't that people don't love or want understand nature, the problem is that we've placed such a priority on appearance, a lot of people can't cope with the idea of getting dirty. They obsess over personal cleanliness in a way that prevents them from relaxing to the point where they can stop fretting about a little grime and see the big picture.

[Vigilanteman]

Back in the 1950's, even organized crime had enough decency not to sell drugs to our kids. An occasional gangsta wanna be who crossed that line might be discovered early on some random morning dangling from a lamp post in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood as a warning to others.

My grandfather-in-law, a former NYC cop, said that once they identified the corpse and his long criminal record, little further effort was devoted to finding whomever put him there. It was an unwritten code of decency respected by organized crime and police alike. And, for the most part, it worked.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Hehe...yeah. It popped into my head and I thought it appropo for my rant.