Playing "off the leash"

My kids had a great time playing this weekend. At the recommendation of a friend, we tried a new playground. Granted, we had to drive a little further than we normally do, but the results were well worth it. At this new playground, guess what we found – kids! And plenty of them. Often times, when we visit the playgrounds closest to our home, there are no other kids playing except for my sons.  At our new playground there were kids of all ages – literally – from infants and toddlers to middle school age, and even high school.

In honor of Free-Range Kids creator Lenore Skenazy’s “Take Your Kid to the Park & Leave Them There Day “on Saturday, I decided to hang back as much as possible this weekend, as my sons played at the public playground. Since my boys are only six, and we didn’t have an older kid to bring with us, I couldn’t completely leave them, but I sat further away than usual. I was close enough to watch and hear many of the interactions, and I have to say I was impressed with all of the kids and how they managed. There were a fair number of 8-10 year-olds playing together without a grown up. My sons joined them in a game of tag, and when my son fell (twice) and cried out “Ow!”, both times a child from the group stopped playing long enough to check that the little one was okay. Nice.

My sons were fascinated with a group of middle schoolers and giggled in delight as the “big kids”  rocked wildly on the small  horses. My sons watched closely as this group of middle school aged kids played, laughed, chatted and flirted (all face-to-face with very little cell phone use!). When one of the older boys started using dicey language, his friends kept him in check, saying, “Hey, there’s kids right over there.” When an older girl sitting in a tree called down to my son, “Hey, little kid! Am I fat?!” He thought for a moment, then looked right back at her and yelled, “Who cares?!” and continued playing. (Later he told me about the interaction and revealed, “Well, I didn’t want to hurt her feelings and I didn’t want to lie.”) Pretty good thinking on your feet for a six-year-old.

My sons tried and tried to get themselves onto a teeter-totter, but once one boy was on, the opposite end was always too high for the other to reach. Eventually, they found that if they both sat towards the fulcrum at the middle, instead of on the seats at the end, they could play that way, and make the ride go up and down.

These “problems” illustrate how capable kids are when they have the opportunity to experience situations and try out solutions. These days, however, due to our culture of fear, kids are not often left to their own devices. They don’t have opportunities to become self-reliant, capable, creative problem solvers. This is precisely why Lenore came up with the idea of  “Bring Your Kids to the Park and Leave Them There” day – so kids today could start coming  back outside (instead of watching TV or surfing the Internet) and discover other kids to play with. Heck, when I was 6 years old I used to walk to the corner store with a few friends. I distinctly remember one day when we went – without adults – to buy a frozen banana dipped in chocolate. Yum! And it wasn’t just delicious and satisfying because it was a frozen treat.  The whole experience of walking along the road, making a decision, handing over the money (I think it was a dime) and walking home was in itself satisfying. The frozen banana was just part of the sweet reward.

We also rode bikes, played in the woods and wandered the neighborhood for hours. Lots of kids did; it would be weird if you didn’t. And the few times I remember someone getting seriously hurt (like emergency-room-visit hurt), we knew where the grown ups were, and precisely how to summon them in a hurry. Without cell phones, of course.

So thank you to Lenore Skenazy for starting this movement. Many folks think she is a kook (see this article in The NY Daily News). She’s not a kook. She is, however, a hoot.  (She gave an absolutely hilarious talk at the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood’s Consuming Kids Summit in April.  Here’s to hoping it’ll be available on You Tube soon.)  Not only is she a hoot but is, in my book, a hero.