A couple of days ago, we went to a large local park late in the afternoon with the kids. Dh told the older kids he would play some baseball with them in one of the fields, which they were all looking forward to. The problem was, they kept having to find new fields to play on, as more and more teams came out to practice, and said they had reserved the field. (All lacrosse teams ? I never had even heard of lacrosse when I was a kid. Since when did that become so popular?) It got me thinking about how these kids were reflective of the trend all over the country, with kids being super busy with scheduled activities, versus lots of time for free play.
When I was a kid and when we went to a park, we ended up playing with other kids there. We had pickup games in our neighborhood when a bunch of kids happened to be outside at the same time, which wasn’t unusual. But nowadays, it’s getting increasingly rare to see kids playing outside; the vast majority of kids have structured activities for after school is over. A kid who wants to have a pickup game with neighbors is a kid who’s going to be waiting a long time!
We all have a tendency to go along with what everyone else is doing, without really thinking about if it’s a good thing or not. And parents just want to do the best thing for their kids. The message nowadays is, kids need all of this structured activity at a very young age to be competitive as they get older, that an early start is a head start. If you don’t put your three year old in ice skating or ballet, the concern is that they will be hopelessly behind when they get to be 10 and there’s no class that’s suitable for their level. I wonder how much parents have thought about the benefit to kids in this approach. Societally we now see so many kids who end up with frantically overcrowded days, rushing from school to extra curricular activities most days of the week. When so many kids need planners to keep track of their social/extra curricular lives, is that a good thing? Does it encourage emotional balance and family togetherness?
I don’t think so. In fact, I think it’s harmful and damaging to kids when we take away their childhoods by scheduling their days so full that most adults would be overwhelmed by it. Kids need time to be bored, time to learn how to fill their own time and entertain themselves. They need the time to relax and let go of the tension of the day, and time to get to be comfortable in their own skin without the constant busy-ness to keep them from knowing themselves. Free time is supposed to be an integral part of being a child (at least in first world countries). There used to be a saying, “Early ripe, early rot”. Precocity wasn’t viewed as a good thing. Now parents strive to outdo each other with who is busier than the next person, whose child is in more activities and has a fuller schedule, and whose child is on a more advanced level than another’s. It’s almost a prestige thing, when you hear moms comparing whose child is doing more. But when are we going to recognize the insanity of this approach, and give our children the time they deserve to just be?
Avivah
