Posted on 07/11/2010 9:00:13 AM PDT by rellimpank
Last week, I offered a different take on why so many kids are getting fat.
For once, it appears we can all agree on something: Today's youngsters don't get outside enough. That's a no-brainer.
But I have yet to hear anyone -- from first lady Michelle Obama, who's made reducing childhood obesity her personal crusade, to the advocacy groups that shake down the fast-food industry -- seriously address why kids don't get outside. And I can't see American kids slimming down until we do.
My conclusion: Children don't get outside because our current parenting culture prohibits unsupervised outdoor play. Today's kids don't have anywhere near the freedom that previous generations enjoyed.
Instead of exploring our neighborhoods and rounding up friends for outdoor play -- and getting a great workout in the process -- our kids are contained until parents or other adults can plan activities and accompany them outside. Which, in the age of stressed, working parents, is infrequent at best.
(Excerpt) Read more at lvrj.com ...
I was a free range kid, too...and could usually be found swaying in the upper branches of some tree far from home.
I’m so glad that some rich limo lib never came along and caught me and grilled me and served me up to their smug friends in some smug treehugger lib restaurant...me bein’ free range and all....
Your stable had a door?
Let’s not forget the Child Protection Service Nazis!
Well!..Gee! If the CPS believes that it is child abuse to leave a kid alone at home, unless he is 12 or older, why would it be OK with these Nazis to leave him **outside** alone??? Huh?
I am sure that the threat of a CPS attack is at the back of every parent’s mind whether they are conscious of it or not.
You had a stable?
Exactly! There has been no increase it is just reported more than it used to be. Parents have been scared by the media and their children are payingthe price of this fright.
Actually it was alongside the corn crib
It was made from rough wood and old tin signs that Pepsi and the beer companies put up around the country.
Wish I had those signs today they would be worth a fortune.
You had a stable and a corn crib AND Pepsi signs? Wow you were rich! Actually my horse had a shed a very small shed. :)
Is that sarcasm or paranoia? I can't tell.
I disagree.
There have always been sexual predators. there were always men who drove up to girls and flashed them. At least once or twice a year a man would drive up and try to get me into his car. there was the creepy guy in the neigborhood that all the kids stayed away from and the father who stared at everyones breasts and made semilewd comments.
There were always creeps.
It depends upon where you live whether you can permit your kids to be outside without supervision. I raised my kids in the country in an upper middle class area and as soon as they were big enough to assert themselves and not be bowled over, they were free rangers. My husband took them to fighting lessons - young. I forget what martial arts they did together.
However, we hosted a boy in the “Fresh Air” program from Harlem for many summers and the only way his Grandma could keep him alive was to keep him indoors unless he was involved in an orgainzed sports activity - which was rare. The kid lived for his summers in the “country.” He ate more while losing weight, too! There was nothing to be afraid of out there compared to his life in Harlem.
It is a shame our country is so filled with criminals and child abusers. But it is and parents can not ignore that.
AND a McClellan Saddle
Well, I was a holy terror around the neighborhood and beyond when a kid. Gone for HOURS. In the weeds, the woods, often miles away. Often just by myself. And my bike.
Can’t imagine that today.
Then again, I still remember getting caramel apples for Halloween and loving every one.
Shame. A real shame.
So was I. There weren't any other school age kids in my neighborhood and my parents thought forcing a child to walk herself to and from school all alone would foster "independence" in the adult. As it happened, I was sexually solicited by adult total strangers four times before I left elementary school.
Flash forward 30 years. To this day, I don't feel comfortable walking anywhere by myself. I will bike alone, but only in daylight and only in well traveled areas. After dark, I weigh whether activities are worth going out alone. They usually aren't. I wasn't fortunate enough to reproduce but if I had been, my children would never have been unsupervised beyond our (fenced and probably locked) back yard. I have no idea if there are more freaks now than in the 70s, but the ones I met back then were plenty scary enough.
I didn’t have a saddle, I rode bareback, really. Talk about muscles, I had ‘em, for a girl I was really strong just from hanging on. wish I still had ‘em. LOL!
Hear, hear. Perverts have always been with us. In the old days they were called “fiends.” If one molested or killed a child there was a story in the paper and then one more in a year or two when he got the rope or the electric chair. Now it’s 24 hours a day of Greta and Nancy and Geraldo for months and months, and in the end the fiend gets parole or goes free on a technicality.
bookmark to read commentary later.
The rest of the article is worth reading, too.
A majority of the parents sit there and watch to make sure their kid or kids are in the school before they will move their car.
Indeed. We rode endless bicycle trails, my with my little bro and a pack of friends. I walked to school from middle school on, and my mother would happily drop me off at the library/mall/museum for some me time that I enjoyed thoroughly :)
These days, my boyfriend is anxious about letting his capable, but tiny, 9 year old ride his go-kart, dirt bike or ATV in the yard out of fear someone will call DSS on him.
It’s really unfair.
It was a child-friendly world because adults put us first. They gave their time to discipline, teach, mentor, and even play with us. We were special to them, and it showed.
None of the junk and drivel kids get nowadays can replace a memory of making cookies with my mom or going fishing or duck hunting with my dad, of working on my grandfather's and great uncle's farms, and they all (and many more friends and relatives) spent time on us as kids, keeping us in line, teaching us how to do things--and how not to. Their watchful eyes were ever on us, and if we stepped out of line, we were often disciplined on the spot, and again when we got home.
It was one of the advantages of everyone knowing everyone else in an area, and it discouraged the predators as well.
Oh yeah, despite our far ranging activity (and there was plenty of it) we had our ‘fat kids’ too. Most slimmed up in puberty after they got a job doing construction or farm work.
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