Free Range Kids Project
If you were born prior to about 1970, your childhood was….as I am sure you are perfectly aware….much different than what kids experience today.
We didn’t have a bunch of fancy high tech electronic gadgets, but we had something infinitely more precious… a lot of freedom.
Well, we took our freedom for granted, and even now many people don’t realize what we’ve lost as the Nanny State has taken over.
We’ve been told that the rules and regulations that now define our lives are for our own protection, but instead of feeling safer and being more content with life we are becoming sick, stressed and depressed at accelerating rates.
Kids are acting out, some schools are practically war zones, and bullying has escalated to a point that was unimaginable when I was a kid.
About 20 years ago I read an interesting article in which the author described how the pond he’d learned to play hockey on when he was a kid was now closed to the public.
It was closed because of fear of lawsuits. This was a pond that the local youths had been skating on for several generations, ever since the community was born. The author went on to remark that when he was a kid, he and his buddies had learned to read the ice. Younger children grew up skating with older siblings and friends, and this experience taught the kids how to read the ice, and know when it was safe to skate on.
I shook my head, sorry about how the kids lost that great natural playground…. But the Nanny State was just getting started back then.
Now, kids can barely leave the house without helmets , elbow and shin guards and a personal cell phone with a GPS locator!
So I was both amused and amazed to read a recent article about what happened on the playground at a New Zealand Primary School. Principal Bruce McLachlan decided to rip up the playground rule book and let the kids be themselves as part of a university experiment.
Chaos now reigns on the playground as the kids climb trees, ride skateboards and use their imagination as they play in a loose parts pit that contains junk such as logs, tires and an old fire hose.
And, as the kids were allowed freedom on the playground, the school saw a drop in bullying, serious injuries and vandalism and concentration levels in classes increased!
Principal Mclachlan notes that “The kids were motivated, busy and engaged. In my experience, the time children get into trouble is when they are not busy or engaged. It’s during that time that they bully other kids, paint graffiti or wreck things around the school.”
This wasn’t a revolution….it was just a return to the days before the health and safety policies of the Nanny State came to rule.
Professor of public health Grant Schofield, who worked on the project, said that there are too many rules in modern playgrounds.
“The great paradox of cotton-woolling children is it’s more dangerous in the long run. Society’s obsession with protecting children ignores the benefits of risk taking. Children develop the frontal lobe of their brain when taking risks, meaning they work out the consequences. You can’t teach them this, and it doesn’t develop by watching TV. They have to get out there.”
As the writer of that article I mentioned earlier had noted…. Kids who were allowed to take risks were able to develop discernment and judgment when it came to the safety of that pond ice.
Ironically, part of the impetus behind this project in New Zealand began when plans to upgrade playgrounds were stopped due to over-zealous safety regulations and expensive playground equipment. There were too many rules, and the kids thought the “safe” play structures were boring.
When researchers who were inspired by their own risk taking childhoods decided to give kids the freedom to create their own play teachers and principals feared the worst, but eventually eight schools took on the challenge.
It was expected that the kids would be more active, but everyone involved was amazed by the results and positive behavioural pay-offs.
Professor Schofield urges other schools to embrace risk taking. “It’s a no-brainer. As far as implementation, it’s a zero-cost game in most cases….all you are doing is abandoning the rules.”
And, to finish off this article, here’s a fun email I recently received from an old pal, a former free range kid like myself….
TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED THE 1930s, ’40s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s!!
First, we survived being born to mothers who may have smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes. Then, after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, locks on doors or cabinets, and, when we rode our bikes, we had baseball caps, not helmets, on our heads. As infants and children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, no booster seats, no seat belts, no air bags, bald tires and sometimes no brakes. Riding in the back of a pick- up truck on a warm day was always a special treat. We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this. We ate cupcakes, white bread, real butter, and bacon. We drank Kool-Aid made with real white sugar. And we weren’t overweight.
WHY? Because we were always outside playing…that’s why! We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And, we were OKAY. We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride them down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem. We did not have Play Stations, Nintendos and X-boxes. There were no video games, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVDs, no surround-sound or CDs, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet and no chat rooms.
WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them! We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from those accidents. We would get spankings with wooden spoons, switches, ping-pong paddles, or just a bare hand, and no one would call child services to report abuse. We ate worms, and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.
We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls, and
although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes. We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them. Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law! These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers, and inventors ever.
The past 50 to 85 years have seen an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.
If YOU are one of those born between 1925-1970, CONGRATULATIONS!
You had the luck to grow up as kids before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives for ‘our own good’.
Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn’t it ?
