Saw a great meme on Facebook a minute ago, a black and white photo of some kids on bicycles with this caption:
"This was called PLAYING... It required no batteries, no electricity, and was done outside. And the only birds were in the trees, and they were not Angry Birds."
This is me at age 7, with my Barbie doll. I loved to play Barbies, but I also loved to play with footballs and basketballs and play soldiers.
I didn't need anything electronic. In fact, I remember being more entertained by a swimming pool or a game of kickball than by anything on TV.
I liked to make mudpies. I liked to get dirty. The woods behind my house in Augusta were an endless source of fascination. We had a playhouse back there. We caught fish in the creek.
I remember drinking out of the garden hose countless times, because I'd been running around the neighborhood.
How many kids today have EVER gotten a drink from the hose? How many kids today can wander around woods without cell phone, with only the admonition to "come in when it gets dark"?
I know parents today are basically always freaked out that their child will be kidnapped. Heck, I live in a nice middle class neighborhood and there are kids on my street who are never seen outside. Lots of them. They don't play outside.
My concern is that in trying to be super cautious, something is being lost. How does a kid learn to be creative and use their imagination when everything is always on a computer screen of some sort?
You show me a big box, as a kid, and I saw all kinds of possibilities. We used to make forts out of army blankets, incide, on rainy days. I played with paper dolls. Bruce played with green plastic soldiers.
I always ran around barefoot. Sometimes I got stung by bees. Sometimes I stepped on splinters. Sometimes I fell and hurt myself.
nobody freaked out.
It was called being a KID. It was called PLAYING.
I had a friend years ago who said "My children will NEVER play with toy guns or weapons! I want to raise peace-loving children!"
Well guess what. Kids will take a stick and make it into a toy gun. It's instinctive. He admitted defeat after a while. I had to privately chuckle.
See the shot below? Me and my cousins? We had all been in the yard playing.
I miss those days.
