On one side are the folks who think kids who are chubby (and probably the overly scrawny ones, too) should be penalized by getting lower marks at school.
On the other side of the horseshoe sit the adults who seem bent on enveloping the little darlings in bubble wrap, rather than risk one of them stubbing a toe or worse, the lawsuit that might result from such a tragedy. That elementary school principal who banned baseballs, soccer balls, and the like from the schoolyard is but one example.
In the middle sit the kids, glued to their personal electronic playgrounds for a disturbing number of hours per week. Too bad we could not just hook our offspring up to machines that would pour in the perfect amount of nutrients and stimulate their muscles, until they reached adulthood.
The thought of sending children outside to play never crosses the mind of many a modern parent. First, “outside” is a scary place, filled with dangerous things like psychotic criminals, rabid bats and worst of all, weather. Second, the kids would not know what to do, with no one to direct them. Gone are the days when all a game of hockey required was kids, sticks and a puck or reasonable facsimile. Third, even if the kids agreed to go outside instead of accusing the parent of cruelty, someone would probably call the authorities to report unsupervised kids wreaking havoc on the neighbourhood.
The two contingents of adults are remarkably similar, in that their objective is control of their children.
Most of us came of age at a time when kids, left to their own devices (and they often were, at that time), could have a great time. The backyard picnic table might become a pirate ship, with neighbour kids and the family dog pressed into service as crew. The field across the road might serve as the desert island beloved of all pirates, on which to seek treasure or have a rousing game of hide-and-go-seek.
On rainy days, a couple of library books offered endless opportunities of travel to foreign lands or even planets, conversations with fascinating people both real and imaginary, and explorations of scientific discoveries throughout the ages.
Kids skipped rope, drew hopscotch lines on asphalt or concrete, chased each other in games of tag, climbed trees, and slid down hills. We played ball and other games in the schoolyard, and built snowmen and forts. Remarkably, despite skinned knees and cut fingers, most of us survived, and even thrived.
Parents instinctively protect their children – if they did not, the species would not exist. Human infants are helpless a lot longer than baby animals. Learning to master their world happens slowly, gradually. Through play, children develop skills, both physical and social. Ideally, parents provide a lot of guidance and protection in the early years, stepping back a little at a time and allowing their children to meet challenges and overcome them. Eventually, the training wheels come off and the parents move aside. Sometimes a parent has to make a quick grab to stabilize a wobbly bike once or twice, and sometimes the child takes a tumble, but it is part of the process of growing up.
Except we have a generation of children who are not allowed to deal with challenges. They are protected, entertained, pampered and insulated – in essence, treated like babies – for far too long. Their activities are closely controlled by adults, both at school and on the sports field. Their free time is largely spent alone with their electronic toys – safe, but with little chance to develop social or physical skills. And we wonder about the proliferation of out-of-shape 30-somethings who have no job or inclination to get one – hot house flower children too fragile for survival in the real world.
No one wants to risk a child getting hurt. But we are hurting them when we do too good a job of parenting. As a society, we need to give children more opportunities to just be kids – take away their video games and send them outside to play, for starters. They might skin a knee, but they might also have a grand time doing it. And so what if the table cloth gets a bit dirty serving as a glorious sail for a pirate ship?