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How children lost the right to roam in four generations »
Posted by: ameliog 2 years, 6 months agoThe report's author, Dr William Bird, the health adviser to Natural England and the organizer of a conference on nature and health on Monday, believes children's long-term mental health is at risk.
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ameliog
Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In ...
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Comments: 56
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berkeley
June 15, 2007, 11:08 a.m.i have a friend in his 60's who rode his bicycle ALL over london as a child, and that was still common among his friends.
this is a very huge issue for the present and future political world we will live in, and it gets almost zero attention.
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Tuishimi
June 15, 2007, 11:22 a.m.When we were kids, as long as we listened for the dinner bell (yes, we had a big bell hanging outside our door and my mother would bang that sucker hard enough that we could hear it a half mile away at least) or got home in time for dinner (did not keep dad waiting) we were good. We rode our bikes from town to town, roamed through the woods (again, from town to town), built forts, did all sorts of stuff that if I allowed my kids to do it I would probably be reported to the DSS today.
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2sidestoeverything
June 15, 2007, 3:16 p.m.When I was a kid I also had the luxury of being about to walk, ride a bike and just play in the dirt. When my children were little we moved out to the boonies and they still had a chance to play and enjoy nature. Now I live in a small city and I have no little kids but I do see the young ones in the neighborhood and they are unable to leave the street they live on. It is sad how things have changed but safety comes first since we have unsavory people out there you got to protect you kids.
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HannibalBarca
June 15, 2007, 3:22 p.m.When I was a kid the island of Montreal was my playground, nothing or nowhere was out of bounds, as a teenager I hitched hiked across Canada 7 times, to and from Ottawa, never a problem. Not chance of this for my kids though and it is sad.As a kid and a young man your word and a handshake was more than enough to settle a bargain, now you need 20 lawyers and it still isn't a sure thing, what a flipping mess progress is
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ameliog
June 15, 2007, 3:27 p.m.The difference between my own childhood and today is so stark that I sometimes wonder if I imagined many of the things I used to do. We used to wander about as far as we wanted to, so long as we could make it home in time for dinner. These experiences were mainly in small town/country environments so I don't know how much things are changed for people who live in the concrete jungles of cities.
We never even used to lock the door of our house until the 80's. Now we fear even our shadow (which I've noticed has been suspiciously following me lately, so I'd better contact homeland security and report it).
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texangelwings
June 15, 2007, 3:30 p.m.Kids are missing out on alot of things. I use to go to the local creek, sane for minnows, catch crawdads, dug up worms, then went fishing in the local pond.( I was a tomboy..lol)
I buy my grandkids balsa wood airplanes to put together & play. (just recently my son & grandson spent 4 hours playing with two of those balsa wood airplanes.) I also have shown my grandkids how to use a blade of grass to make a whistle.
The other day, two young boys that live on this lake, they have made their own raft from pieces of wood & foam. The were paddling around the lake edge and fishing. The used a shirt & a stick for a sail and a small board for a paddle. I thought of Mark Twains books, while watching the two boys on that raft.
Without the freedoms to roam, one loses imagination, the adventure & creativity, sad for kids today. Nature trails & visit to a farm would help kids today!
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hsaleem
June 15, 2007, 5:21 p.m.I agree that kids are missing a lot but time has changed and so has the overall scene. You can't allow your kids these days to just go and bang!
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katiecakes
June 15, 2007, 5:52 p.m.I was a child of the 80s (born in 1980) in suburbia, not a lot of nature. My big adventure was going to the local convenient store ( 2 or 3 blocks away) and buying a slushie. We used to hop fences and play in each others yards. It was recent enough that the neighboorhood parents were really worried about strangers though. We got the stranger danger lecture at least once a day. Now my nephews have to stay on their street and are driven to school and everywhere else. It's a hard line to toe, over protection/supervision and saftey.
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maryhaze
June 15, 2007, 6:33 p.m.i'm blessed that we have 400 acres in the middle of nowhere so my kids spend every day like the "good old days". i don't see them til dark, they graze out of the garden & just spent the afternoon making & flying paper airplanes. of course, it also helps that i run a dog rescue with 40 big dogs so the kids are never alone. because of the dogs, everyone except the idiot jehovah's witnesses know enough to stay off our property. even they have been warned that the next time they show up, if the dogs don't get them, i'm holding them til the cops get here on trespassing charges. i don't want anyone near my kids, especially religious nuts!
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blowback
June 15, 2007, 8:05 p.m.It's getting harder to roam the natural world because there's less and less of it.
Kids these days roam through virtual reality.
So do we.
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koranagirl
June 15, 2007, 9:32 p.m.This is a good article. And I saw one the other day about how violence against children peaked in the 70's and has gone down ever since then and how now children are the safest they've been ever. Maybe that's because they don't go out. Another phenomena the author didn't explore is how families had large numbers of children, and today we dote on one or two. Years ago, up to half the children would die from childhood diseases by the time they reached adulthood due to lack of simple antibiotics and vaccines. I think people also accepted childhood death as a painful, but prevalent way of life. Interesting. I personally let my kids wander--take the bus, ride their bikes, but my husband is part of the "drive them" themesong, which I think makes them more dependent and less able to function on an adult level. oh well.
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MiraJane
June 15, 2007, 9:44 p.m.it is sad how kids no longer play outside. it's even sadder that parents make "play dates" for them. what the hell is a "play date"? let the kids make their own friends!
as koranagirl noted, kids are safer today. stranger abductions are rare. there aren't any more "sickos and perverts" out there now, we are only more aware of them.
children can't be protected from everything. make them aware of the dangers of the world and turn them loose. The kids that live on my block are lucky. They get to play in the street. They ride their bikes, they jump rope, they play basketball, they chase each other around.
But then about three quarters of the people on my block are new to the United States. They haven't learned the rules of don't let your kids be kids yet.
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canadianrancher57
June 15, 2007, 9:56 p.m.When I was younger I spent many hours swimming in the creek that runs through two miles of pasture we own,I would climb trees and walk for miles. When I was in my early forties my kids would have friends over and we all would go swimming in the creek in the evening just before sundown, last week one of my oldest son's friends came home from Alberta and stopped in for a visit we sat and talked for quite awhile and just before sundown he asked if I still went swimming in the creek, I replied to him that I still do, he promised to come back some evening before leaving to go for an evening swim. I'm lucky because the world has changed so much but that creek and pasture are the same as when my grandfather swam there many years ago. I have two sons that still like to come home in the fall when we bring the cattle in because when we go out to get them it is all done on foot, to them this is a freedom that very few people know.
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LadyKelien
June 15, 2007, 10:43 p.m.I guess I can say my kids are lucky. We live on 11 achers of woods. We live 5 miles from the nearest gas station and all between us and it are some farms and houses. Now I don't let the younger ones roam around by themselves so much. 7, 6, and 5 just isn't quite old enough for that but they get outside every day and can explore the edge of the woods. They pick the wild grapes and Blackberries for me and fish the crawdads out of the creek. If you took away our phones, tv's, satalite, computers, they would live a very 1920's kind of life. Freedom to be children and explore their world while still being required to learn the importance of disipline and hard work.
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foksipayne
June 15, 2007, 11:10 p.m.I'm faily young still so the only time I was allowed to roam was on weekly camping trips. It was good for me. When I mentioned that i wanted to go camping so my 7yr old could do the same, my mother was aghast! My dad tried to console her reminding her how good I did roaming the woods' always finding my way back. But she would hear none of it. So then I suggested that the first few trips I'd accompany him so that he could become familiar with the surroundings, My dad laughed, saying I wasn't as young as I used to be and that there are snakes out there. Ha ha, there were snakes then too, I used to shoot at them with my bb gun. They were more afraid of me than I was of them!
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quicksilver0602
June 16, 2007, 4:09 a.m.I'm not sure if there are necessarily more sick people per capita. I knew of several serious incidents growing up that were kept hush-hush because people just didn't talk as openly about these things. e.g. if a school employee was suspected of sexual misconduct, they were quietly dismissed and it was never spoken of again; if somebody's parent seemed a little "off" you simply weren't allowed to play at that friend's house, etc..
I believe there has always been a certain level of danger but thankfully it's not a taboo subject anymore. My mom did an excellent job teaching us to avoid people that made us feel unsafe and her lessons helped me in more than a few situations.
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slate
June 16, 2007, 9:50 a.m.When I was a child in the 60's we just had to be home before dark. Now, unfortunately there is too much danger around to allow children to 'roam'. It's a sad reality.
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evelyna
June 16, 2007, 10:14 a.m.It is not that bad out there. Parents are too paronoid. I hardly see any kids riding bikes any more. I think it is because of the computer and video games. No sense of adventure when they can get it in the virtual world.
People are more secluded too. People do not have a lot of time to socialize.
You learn some things by hanging out but mostly a waste of time.
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Sideways_28
June 16, 2007, 11:07 a.m.There is more danger, mainly because you don't know the people around you anymore. they move in they move out and then more come in, because of that they have no connection to your kids and that means no sense of responibility for them. the sickos are probably the same per capita, the problem is there is more capita. and people are to impatient, if there is a kid on a bike in the road most drivers dont slow down they just buzz them and keep on going, the world is to fast paced.
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