All Work and No Play: Why Kids Are More Anxious, Depressed (2011)
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
When she comes home and she tells us what she and her friends did (I don't ask, she just wants to share) it is hilarious and I usually think "It was better if I didn't know this and that". But then I think about the 8 years old version of me "bombing" the toy soldiers together with a friend of mine by spraying alcohol on them and by setting everything on fire, and I relax...
The site: https://relaygo.com/
I suppose because I'm not a parent, I don't have that built in level of worry / paranoia, though I "fondly" remember how fearful my own mother was, but I don't get it. Isn't the point of letting your kid venture out to help them establish and explore freedom and boundaries?
You tell your child not to stay out past the street lights, not venture past certain landmarks, and then let them roam. If they comply, great! If not, they learn actions have consequences.
If I were a kid, I'd make sure to conveniently forget / power off / not charge / lose that thing as much as possible.
Those consequences may mean that everyone is looking for them whole night. Or severe injury. Or you having to deal with cops due to trespassing.
Or that they will bully other kids and you won't be there to learn it happened and deal with it.
There are consequences as in "teacher is angry for 5 minutes" and then there are consequences.
Also, if my kid would intentionally loose devices like that, that kid would have less freedom and later then the kid I could trust.
Similar with bullying and worry about potential bad influence group.
Some of which are potentially fatal.
Why don't we put pads on the kids, helmets, head gear and mouth pieces
Then we could pad the floor and walls, put cameras inside bathroom stalls
NOFX - Separation of Church and Skate[0]
Or they die, which kinda sucks.
Look, I'm generally in favour of kids wandering about the place like I did when I was a kid, but even back then we had a tragically high number of kids getting themselves crushed under farm equipment, falling from heights and landing hard, getting exposed to hazardous materials, or drowning in pits full of animal shit.
It's simply disingenuous to act as if the worst that can happen is a wee scrape and a lesson learned.
> but even back then we had a tragically high number of kids getting themselves crushed under farm equipment, falling from heights and landing hard, getting exposed to hazardous materials, or drowning in pits full of animal shit.
I think it's a bit odd to act as if kids are routinely parading around industrial zones. It sounds as if you and I grew up in vastly different parts of the world.
I do wonder if it is a particularly American thing to take the wild exception as the norm like this.
My mom was often worried, but she set just a few hard rules: Come back inside when the streetlights go on, don't talk to anyone you see while out, don't go anywhere further than the parking lot alone. And that was fine, and we got smart because of it. We were vigilant and carefree at the same time. We crossed roads looking both ways to get to parks we'd never been to. And we pushed the boundaries a little to see what would happen.
Me and my female friend were once approached by a guy "looking for a dog". He wanted us to come with him to the dog park to help him look for it. Understanding what it could mean, we said no and ran inside-- as we'd been taught. Since we were given the freedom to make such decisions, and since we'd seen danger before, we knew the "right thing" to do and we chose to do it.
I didn't have a cell phone back then. I'm sure if I was given one I'd promptly "lose it" just as you say. In suburbia it's just not necessary to be in constant contact with your kid. They're not gonna call you unless you've raised them to be as docile and paranoid as yourself. They won't need to.
First of all, the dangers of modern phones to emotional health, for adults as well as children, I think is very well established by now.
So this device seems like a decent compromise for overly concerned parents (this is a redundant phrase).
I think there are also benefits for the child. In earlier generations, children would need to run home to ask permission to stay out longer or engage in a new activity. Now they can make those requests with less interruption to their current activities.
"If they comply, great! If not, they learn actions have consequences."
The key is to figure out what level of consequences they are ready to handle at different points in their development.
If I'd give her the walkie-talkie then my wife would call her every 10 minutes and ask her where is she. Tracking her with a GPS would keep me calm but I don't think it will help my daughter.
The only time I freaked out was when she removed the watch and she didn't come home on time: I went out to look for her and in the meantime, she went home. Realizing that she may go home on another path I went back home and found her watching TV. Honestly I think that those devices are meant to keep the parents calm, not for the sake of the children.
I think you're absolutely right that our product may do more to help parents feel secure letting their kids roam, rather than actually making them safer. Still, if it gets kids out more and helps parents feel more comfortable, I think that's a win.
Anyway, the device looks nice and is a step in the right direction to overcome the fear of the parents.
Good luck with your business.
i fail to see the practical difference. if would-be predators are staying home, it is still safer for kids to go play outside.
I don't have children yet so I'm probably way out of turn when I say I like the "be home for dinner" method after a certain age.
Sometimes we'd come home scraped up and dirty, but we'd be okay. My mother was about 10 feet away when my brother broke his arm.
It's just such a game of chance. It's probably best not to train for fear, though. (as a general philosophy, not addressing any anecdotes here)
If kids are safer because they are staying at home, then we can’t criticise parents for not letting them out to play by themselves. That would be like saying Donald Trump doesn’t need bodyguards since very few presidents have been attacked.
For example, in the online account management section, where one can set up the channel (I'm just guessing how it works, I don't know how it gets set up), an option can be toggled to enable/disable the parents getting the capability to initiate a call or not, and this option is protected by a second password which only the kid knows, so that parent and kid set up this property together, in an agreement, and the parents can't override the agreement unless the kid also agrees and enters the password.
This would help chronic helicopter parents to not be able to constantly call their kids and possibly tell them to send them the gps coordinates or bug them otherwise.
The same should go for GPS access, that only kids can send position updates to the parents, and optionally, if both agree (again, protected with the kids password), let the parents poll the GPS data.
[edited] I know you market yourself as tetherless, but I'm referring to something as simple (and optional) as the mechanism Roku does for their wrist straps on remotes (and Nintendo Wii, etc):
Of course, every kid is a different universe, but in general I feel we are missing quite a bit of that.
... And teachers.
A significant part of this, I think, is a design failure instead of a parenting one. Suburbs are bad at almost everything they do, except creating neighborhoods with big houses, grassy yards, and decent schools. In particular, they're poison for both children's play and parents' peace of mind.
As for kids - empty lawns, identical houses, and artificial boundaries don't support energy or imagination. There's nothing to look at, nowhere to go, and not much to do. when I was a kid the only suburban house where we played outside was one where the neighbors had given permission for us to play games across 3+ yards. Meanwhile at more rural houses, there were trees to climb, places to hide, and forests to explore. And in mixed density condos and apartments, there were sidewalks along the roads, shops to look into, town parks with soccer fields to play on.
As for parents - suburbs are honestly one of the worse environments I can think of to turn kids loose into, after serious wilderness and dense cities. Many suburbs have no sidewalks and most have wide roads with long distances to travel and lots of vision-hiding curves; perfect conditions for kids to get hit by cars, whether they're walking, biking, or playing street games. There are enough people and cars around to worry about someone with ill-intent, unlike a rural setting, but not enough to trust in bystanders or authority figures like an urban or mixed-density setting. There are neighbors to get mad at your kids, but if you want someone watching them it falls entirely on you. And there's so little to do that it raises fears of vandalism, bullying, or any other badness you might get from idle hands. For a younger kid, the sheer uniformity of suburbs can raise questions about finding their way home.
There are almost no redeeming features to suburbs, but I regularly hear "at least it's a good place to raise a family". I don't think it's true; suburbs are superficially clean and inviting, but they lack the stuff that makes unstructured life healthy and inviting for kids.
There are a lot of restaurants and coffee shops and such around, so there are a lot of opportunities to walk somewhere with friends after school and hang out, or walk to someone's house and hang out or play music or something.
We also have a community pool and basketball courts where they could walk and be with friends when they were younger, especially during the summer.
I think that could be much harder in suburban environments, where it's almost impossible to get from point A to point B without a parent driving.
Around 2010 I think it had declined to about 200 yards max. It's really extremely sad. I wouldn't want to be a kid now. I wouldn't want to have those memories of childhood. It's part of several reasons I don't think it would be ethical for me to reproduce at this time.
People's fear is a sliding scale, and a child's safety is one of those things that the human psyche gives infinite value. That really screws up your ability to manage risk. People are even more afraid now, even though the causes of early death are the lowest they've ever been and we've marched ourselves into a joyless panopticon where nobody really decides their own destiny from an early age.
These kids are going to absolutely hate us.
The decline has been going on constantly, over many generations. If the trend continues as it has, these kids will think we were too lenient and restrict the movement of their own children even further.
Two years ago, an Ontario foster family had their children taken away solely for refusing to lie about the existence of the Easter Bunny[1]. The parents were planning on celebrating the holiday with the children, but when the Children's Aid Society of Hamilton discovered the parents were unwilling to lie if asked, they had the children immediately removed from the home. The caseworkers treated learning the truth about the Easter Bunny as if it were a serious immediate danger to the safety of the children. If that sounds ridiculous, it's because it is.
The foster parents won a lawsuit over the matter in March of this year, but it's kind of too late to make things right. The lives of both the children and the parents have been permanently changed by the bad decisions by case workers.
If I was that Manitoba parent, I'd be angry and scared too. Nothing happened this time, but if she continues letting her kids play in the backyard, she's rolling the dice again. All that needs to happen is for her same neighbour to make another complaint, and to get an unreasonable caseworker. Superficially, it might even seem reasonable, "children removed from home of woman after repeated complaints of neglect" is not a headline that sounds concerning.
[1]: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/easter-bunny-edmonton...
And people all over the world read about the case and started to worry that something similar might happen to them, even though it was one single case on another continent (from where I am) two years ago. Maybe we should treat it as the freak incident it was.
The problem here was an overzealous case worker -- which is a real issue that needs to be addressed, as you say. And it was addressed by the final ruling, sending a message to future case workers -- not an incorrect law about parenting responsibilities. Making a judgment about the merits of an investigation before the investigation means that you need to decide to not investigate anything.
How often do case workers inappropriately cancel a foster-care arrangement, vs how often to foster parents actually harm foster children?
Or will thank us for our lenience and be sad about what the society as large is forcing them to do to their kids. Kind of like my mom, which expresses her sadness over the bullshit paranoia my children will live in, and I totally agree with her on this.
And the real reason parents go along with this and restrict the children further is a combination of media paranoia, complete failure to do basic maths instead of failing prey to availability herustic, and of course the presence of "do-gooders" who will happily call social service workers on you for any reason whatsoever.
(Oh, and the fear of "do-gooders" also feeds into the general paranoia.)
Yes, causes of early death are the lowest they've ever been, perhaps because we've gotten better at caring for children, while removing the joy of crippling injury and death?
Even ignoring that, let's say you're right. Where do you think would be a good balance of that? Surely kids would have even fewer early deaths if we just kept them in a single room except for going out in the backyard for mandatory exercise. Like a dog. And why stop at 18? Surely unnecessary adult deaths could be prevented too by not allowing movement or decision-making for anyone. But who would even want to be alive?
Obviously that's absurd. So the answer isn't only to minimize risk of death and injury. The answer is to find a balance between control and chaos, where safety and freedom are acceptable. I'm of the opinion that we have strayed too far towards control.
You're also falling for that risk management problem I mentioned earlier. Humans have an internal algorithm to manage risk. But like most algorithms, it tends to break down when you feed it values of infinity or zero. When we give anything an infinite value, any finite amount of risk is unacceptable. We'll take zero risk and as a result there can be no good outcome, because life without risk has no potential reward.
An example of that is the stunted emotional development that kids have these days. We responded to obvious risks of early death and discounted less-obvious risks of failure to thrive later in life. It becomes easy to blame individuals for their own shortcomings at that point, even if it was perfectly possible for them to develop normally if we hadn't squelched them.
And I think there is evidence of current and future generations having less opportunities, less wealth, a worse climate, even less sexual encounters than previous generations. I think that's sad. We dream of always giving a better life to our children, and now we're greedily taking that life from them. They will know when they grow up and look around them. They will understand what happened.
I suppose when a middle-class mother is having a single child at age 40 the child is harder to replace than back in the old days when she'd had three by age 25 and could easily produce another three, as required, if some of an earlier batch got squashed by a lorry. Even if people aren't consciously reasoning like that perhaps it's a factor.
It's a herd thing. We have difficulty choosing to do anything drastically differently from the rest of society, and raising children involves another being who doesn't necessarily have freedom to consent so society gets even more involved if what you are doing is deviant. But the drift of society has caused the norm to be something that decades ago would have been considered highly deviant. If you were a hovering parent like is common today in the 60s or 70s, you'd be an absolute freak and considered abusive. But today the opposite is true.
I'm glad you mentioned that the kids are sometimes the ones who make the choice themselves. I guess we're putting so much fear around them that it's making them decide the wisest course of action is to do what is normal and practiced by all their peers, be in constant sight of their parents. Really a shame.
SO MANY parents sit with their kids in a car at the bus stop. I'm not just talking about 1st graders either.
There's this one high school bus stop where no less than 7 or 8 parents are parked there with their kid sitting inside. Everyone is isolated from each other.
These are 15-18 year olds in a normal high school in the suburbs in a reasonably safe neighborhood at a large public school district.
But I see a ton of teenagers (middle / high school) being driven to the bus stop where the kid doesn't even leave the car until the bus is there. To me that seems a little off.
Bike racks at schools used to be filled - that is no longer the case. By comparison, this is what it looks like in Netherlands: https://youtu.be/8NUgB_xkIvU
I've tried to explain why below, but the real point is just "from personal experience I can't image it isn't detering people from riding bikes".
The main reason a helmet is such a problem is just convenience. A bike, like a car, I can just lock up wherever I go. The helmet I would have to carry around with me all day. That makes whole day just slightly more inconvenient, and it's honestly just not worth it to me.
The second is that wearing a helmet makes me feel substantially less safe. There are two direct reasons that I can articulate for this, but I'm not sure they fully explain the effect. There are also statistics that support me, showing that wearing a helmet is correlated with a increase in collisions.
The first reason is wearing a helmet substantialy impedes my hearing. This is probably a bit foreign to people who are use to driving, but hearing is incredibly useful for knowing when a car/truck/bus/etc is coming up behind me. A helmet increases wind noises to the point where the signal is much less useful, I'm not confident I will always hear a car in time to react with one on, and I'm worse at pinpointing the location. Incidentally I find the lack of sound when driving fairly disturbing and scary, since I'm so used to being able to use it.
The second is that the extra weight on my head seems to make looking around take more psychological effort, so I end up doing it best, so I end up having less awarness of cars around me. This is a rather surprising (to me) effect, but I'm certain it's real. Of course it's not the end of the world because I do still make substantial effort to look around, it's just epsilon less often which makes me epsilon less safe.
Edit - I’m not saying I support laws enforcing helmets for adults; I just don’t think that helmet theft is a big concern.
I've had the ultra-cheap lights on my bike stolen. I've seen plenty of other bikes stripped of everything except the frame itself.
This is why I always take my helmet (and my lights) with me, lock my bike and the front wheel with a good lock, and chain lock my seat down for good measure. Haven't had anything stolen since -- even in some sketchy areas.
London, famous for rampant bike theft, and I've never had a locked up helmet stolen. Lights, I take with me; I'm not mad.
And even if the actual rate of crime is lower than the perception, it's still an anxiety people have to add to their daily routine.
Unrelated anecdote: the first time I went out with a helmet was the first time I banged my head, I ducked under a branch as I normally would, only I'd not allowed the extra room, banged my head hard and came off my bike (gently). I still wear and encourage helmet use.
- Rain (possibly solvable with a bag of some sort, but this becomes increasingly complex, consider locking).
- Locked bikes are annoyingly often bashed slightly. My bike can take the abuse, but a bashed up helmet becomes even more useless, sometimes without even showing it.
- Makes locking the bike substantially harder. If I don't want my helmet stolen I'd have to lock it through the actual helmet and not the straps. That would be a pain in the ass with a ulock (and other lock types are considered even less secure for the bike).
It's not total hearing loss, but it catches the wind which makes noise once you're going a reasonable speed. Similar to the noise you experience if you orient your head the wrong way when there is a reasonable amount of wind going by you, but you can't get rid of it by turning your head. I also find I'm much worse at pinpointing direction all the time with it on (presumably because of sound bouncing off of it... since ear's generally pinpoints sound via echo).
I've found other people who agree with me on this, and other people who don't notice it. My best guess is that the people who don't notice it just never learnt to use sound as such an important queue while biking, particularly with respect to direction, but I don't know.
“My question is, you are covered from head to toe in protective padding. So why don’t you wear a helmet?”
“The suit’s got a cervical airbag that blows up when you fall off the board, so you can bounce on your head. Besides, helmets feel weird. They say it doesn’t affect your hearing, but it does.”
“You use your hearing quite a bit in your line of work?”
“Definitely, yeah.”
Uncle Enzo is nodding. “That’s what I suspected. We felt the same way, the boys in my unit in Vietnam.”
[…]
“Our job was to go through the jungle making trouble for some slippery gentlemen carrying guns bigger than they were. Stealthy guys. And we depended on our hearing, too—just like you do. And you know what? We never wore helmets.”
“Same reason?”
“Exactly. Even though they didn’t cover the ears, really, they did something to your sense of hearing. I still think I owe my life to going bareheaded.”
put your coat on
check you have your phone and keys
Pick up your briefcase/backpack
before you leave for work?
The popularity of the iPhone and the willingness of people to give their data to data collecting entities that provide convenient services is a testament to that.
Part of effect is that helmet campaigns paint cycling as much more dangerous as it really is. So, more risk averse people are putt off bikes entirely and less likely to use them. It makes people associate bike with picture of accident instead of pleasure.
Part of effect is that kids cant use bikes on playground "normally" how they would without helmet - they cant chase, hop on bike, go 10 meters and hop down.
Part of effect is that you cant use bike as transport device when you need your hair to look reasonably good afterwards.
Part of effect is that helmet is one more thing you have to carry with you and it might make difference between "yeah kiddo take it" and "nah, it stays home".
As a teenager I never even bothered to get a helmet because I would have to ask parents to spend money on it, and it would be inconvenient to carry around all the time. It interfered with the flexibility and fun of a bike. If I were forced to use it (and God forbid, elbow and knee protectors), it'd probably cut my bike usage in half, because what was just a matter of hopping on and riding away would become a whole dress-up game.
Related, I've seen this concept called "trivial inconveniences", and I like this essay on the topic: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/reitXJgJXFzKpdKyd/beware-tri....
I'm a cyclist. I race mountain bikes, used to race on pavement, and still avidly train several days/week on local roads and bike paths.
I wear a helmet when I'm training or traveling a long distance at speed. On roads with cars, higher speeds = higher risk for major accident.
I don't wear a helmet when I'm cruising to the pub for a drink. Yeah, I can still fall. But, I'm on the mountain bike (relatively easy to hop off, compared to a road race bike), at slower speeds, and generally not on roads with cars.
I do wonder if part of the problem is the type of bikes popular in some counties. The US has a large number of road race bikes relative to townie/dutch-style bikes. The townie/dutch bike is slower, lower to the ground, has a step through, and more upright seated position (better visibility). All should lead to fewer major accidents.
I really feel like there must be other factors at play here though...
http://road.cc/content/news/5046-danish-call-helmet-law-thro...
Forced helmets are a great example of lawmaking being driven by ignorance and opinion rather than facts and stats.
Its like system designers who are afraid to get theire hands "dirty" and base there whole product on interview-questions and available documentation. Also- remember its most important that he/she who designed the rules has no trace of responsibility left.
The problem is, these kind of failure-designers have on paper tryied to make the world better and can shift all blame towards the victims of theire bad solutions.
He/She did not wear the trousers of doom and had a chainsaw accident- insurence claim denied. No wonder policy designers are among the most hated people in the world- but that sort of rightous widespread anger leads to them having even less reality contact and even more reality diverging safety-dance-rules.
So always try to be friendly, no matter how insane, out of this world and damaging the rules coming from bureaucratic centralia are.
It gets worser still- alot of these laws are used as hooks for a state-driven mafia- aka selling unneeded goods to people who would have never bought them in the first place without the laws.
Take the splitting up of the germans driver licenses for various small scale vehicle classes or various other safety laws, which are basically buisness generation for safety measures and consultant services. There is something particular perverse if police is forced to enact and enforce mafia created laws.
There is alternative protection gear by now with better properties (knee/shin guards made from plastic, and plastic guards with passive cooling mechanisms).
TL,DR; Im not generically claiming that protection is the root of all evil. Im claiming that the most used safety gear at the moment is lousy- and that domagtic safety procedures are creating the accidents they prevent. Because people will wear them to exaustion, and then strip them off with no replacement.
Analogy to several existing computer safety solutions intended.
Personally I don't understand why you'd want to drive more than 10 minutes by car to work, it's such a waste of your lifetime.
But then, I have a sailboat that I'd very much prefer as a home (the wife sadly has a different opinion)
By choosing to drive 40 minutes to work, you can live 10 minutes from a national park or a beach or the rest of your family or a golf course or whatever works for you in your off hours.
Why orient your life around your work?
It's actually choosing not to orient your life around work that causes the decision to live closer, thus saving commuting time and overall spending less time on work related activity.
If you don't live somewhere where it's easy you definitely won't. Make the things you /want/ to do easy. You'll do the things you /must/ do whether it's easy or hard, but if the things you want to do are hard as well you won't do them ever.
Probably big cities need to be punished for attracting to many companies with a lot of staff. Believe it or not, Linz, the city I live in, has more workplaces that inhabitants. Something's clearly wrong here and I don't mean the work-daily rush hour.
Did you not read the next sentence?
As you allude, pedestrian safety has likely improved as pedestrians simply disappear from the increased number of roads, and in those few inner city areas where there is pedestrian density, this has pushed back both against cars and bicycles. In my neighborhood and city for example, speed limits are dropping and cars are being excluded from some streets.
Driver safety has likely improved due to concerted efforts, car improvements and everyone increasingly being stuck in gridlock.
Furthermore, if this theory is correct, it may also explain increase cycling fatality rates, as those remaining cyclists are presumably cycling further and sharing roads with traffic.
Indeed, the best place to look to try to figure this out in Australian terms is probably Canberra. It's the only vaguely populated Australian city with relatively small commutes and a complex network of actual bicycle paths.
But as far as I know, Canberra has had relatively steady bicycle use, and relatively high rates amongst children.
You would also need to explain why your hypothesised cause results in a steady continued decline, as opposed to a sudden once-off effect or rate shift as often happens with many such policy implementations, whereas my explanation does fit such data (assuming that the data is as you say).
In short, I just don't think the evidence for your hypothesis that it's the helmet laws as opposed to continued geographic/demographic shift holds up under scrutiny.
It's even more free-form than Legos, as it's not limited to any kind of pre-made shapes. It never hardens, and can be endlessly re-shaped in to new forms. It's a great way to get kids exercising their own imaginations.
edit: The point I am trying to make is that kids don't want the toy that are good for them. They want "cool" stuff. And the market are really good at making new crap.
Buying pre-made toys defeats the purpose of the clay, which is for kids to make their own toys out of.
It's like recommending you buy your kids some paints and paint brushes only to hear someone ask, "great, where can I buy them a painting of their favorite character?" You don't. That's not the point. If the kids want a painting of their favorite character, the paints and brushes empower them to paint their own. Same with clay.
The results might not be up to the high standards of adults, but usually kids don't care, have a lot of fun with the materials anyway, and actually learn to be creative instead of mere consumers of someone else's creativity.
"kids don't want the toy that are good for them. They want "cool" stuff"
Cool stuff that they get bored with 5 minutes after they got it. Clay gives them an inexhaustible material that they can shape in to whatever they desire (including the cool stuff that they make themselves), and if they're bored with one thing they just mash it up and make something else.
I speak from personal experience -- having spent endless amounts of time playing with clay as a kid while many of my other toys languished. Of course it's not the ultimate toy, and kids will eventually get bored with it too and move on to something else. But it'll always be waiting there for whatever new thing their imagination conjures up next, instead of needing yet another trip to the toy store.
So a direct answer to "where can I get plasticine clay avengers characters for my kids?" is 'from raw plasticine and maybe half an hour of parenting assistance'. Then you leave them to it.
I'm not sure if I'd plop a pile of clay in front of a child as an answer to their desire for some action figure, even with my own guidance to help them make it. I'd give clay as its own completely independent gift, perhaps with the only guidance being that they can "make anything with it" and only if the kid struggles to do anything, asks for help, or just forgets about the clay for a long time would I even consider trying to give more guidance than that.
Grew up in 90s china, clay was actually really popular because they were cost effective to provide entertainment. On the other hand, even back then there were tons of companies making shitty toys around popular cartoons.
Right now company are smart enough to make shitty "educational toys" as they figured out they need to sell to the parents.
Kids are meant to be educated. Without good art and technology education, They would just consume crappy toys like junk food.
I was lucky enough to discover the fun of dissembling and repairing electronics for my parents. But not all children are like that.
It all comes down to how we educated young kids. Primary school teachers are not the best educated and they are paid lowest. Better education will mean smarter toy industry and more educated adult in the future.
But who on earth is going to pay for that?
There's also much therapy in smashing clay, it doesn't hurt it as I remind every person I instruct on making pottery.
Er, yes, that’s exactly what they want.
I think you’re talking past the GP; they weren’t making an argument about what toys kids will retrospectively agree they enjoyed, but rather what toys kids will demand.
(Also, something you may not have considered: frequently the toys kids want are not about playing with them themselves, so much as they’re about making other kids more interested in playing with them, and thereby becoming friends.)
Buy some, show them.
All clay bars get dirt or turned psychedelic or brown after a few rounds so is not a totally renewable material.
Source: 20 years as a volunteer with children's clubs.
Mississauga, CANADA: Lots of parks but almost all are empty throughout the year even during Summer time.
Karachi, PAKISTAN: Severe lack of parks but even the ones which are there are usually empty even during winter times.
Culprit in both cases: technology such as mobile phones, video games and TV. And also, paranoid parents who don't let kids go out and enjoy (and are probably too lazy to just sit quietly in the park to watch the kids).
Part of me struggles to believe that kids don't want to play outside unsupervised – at least once they're outside.
My suspicion is that children just aren't allowed to be out alone as much today.
Parents would be almost seen as negligent if their children weren't supervised within earshot. Not in all cases of course, but my guess would be the parents have changed far quicker than children or the distractions available to them.
One asshole calling CPS will put a little voice in the back of everyone's head telling them to be slightly more restrictive with their kids.
>art of me struggles to believe that kids don't want to play outside unsupervised – at least once they're outside.
Kid's don't want to play outside in the first place. They'd rather watch TV or whatever. If you make them play outside they'll stop whining and do it in fairly short order.
Combine the up front whining with the little voice and you see why "go play outside until mommy is done making dinner" is much less common.
Partly out of habit, partly laziness, and partly for the satisfaction of exposing the stupidity of the age questionnaire.
Looking at the comments here, it seems everyone thinks that it's tantamount to child abuse to not let a kid of any age roam free in any environment. Of course, I notice that many people expressing that don't seem to have kids of their own yet :)
I am amused by nostalgic comments about dangerous things that we all did decades ago and how: 1) we were fine, so how dangerous could it have been? and 2) look how much safer things are today, so it's no big deal.
Many apparently have never considered that maybe things are safer today because we don't do those things, or that survivorship bias means that asking people who never wore seatbelts as a kid about whether it was dangerous may not be the best approach.
I grew up in the 80s and looking back now, I honestly probably roamed a little bit more freely than was healthy. I would ride my bike around town alone for hours when I was 6 or 7, including across major streets with heavy traffic. On at least one occasion some stranger tried to get me to get into their car. Now, I was taught to be careful but I doubt I had the maturity to understand the gravity of some of these situations.
I have a 3-year-old now and I'm going to work hard to not be paranoid and to let her explore and gain independence as she gets older, but I'm also not interested in making a statement or pushing back against societal trends or recreating my own childhood. I want to make sure she gets as much freedom as possible within the boundaries of a reasonable degree of safety, and I'll just use some common sense and balance to figure out what's best for her. Her childhood will look different from mine, and that's perfectly OK.
I have two of my own, now 12 and 14. My wife was very paranoid, very overprotective, very helicopter parent. We continue to fight about this, because I grew up roaming outside in the 80's whereas she insists that "the world is different than it was back then". More than anything else, I worry about the potential health problems my kids might develop from having spent 90% of their lives indoors, sitting in front of a TV or a computer (and the people who say, "well you should just restrict your kids screen time" are the ones who don't have kids of their own).
I took a look. Wow, this is golden:
We're not a "really fucked up species". Humans are not naturally good or evil. They're naturally unskilled-- ignorant, deluded, and often incompetent, but not evil. The purpose of civilization is to maintain the knowledge that helps people do the right thing. Unfortunately, societies become corrupt rapidly and develop elites that have defined themselves by doing the wrong thing, and then those wrong things begin to define the social tone and corruption sets in. Civilization is a storehouse of knowledge that helps people figure out what the right thing to do is, but societies are incentive systems that usually encourage doing the wrong thing.
I seem to recall a piece on burnout in mathematicians (academics). Decades spent on ppotentially unsolvable problems, unbalanced reward/discouragement.