We’re Going to Get Louder, Folks!

Published on January 23, 2012 by Mike Lanza

I'll be a lot more visible this year, since my book on making a Playborhood will be published this spring. Our movement is really building steam!

“Children’s ability to roam has basically been destroyed,” said Danah Boyd, a researcher on children’s use of social networking, in a New York Times article today.

It’s typical of our society’s fatalistic attitude towards childhood. In general, that attitude says, “Yes, childhood isn’t as good as it used to be. Just get over it and move on.”

This really pisses me off. No, I’m not ready to move on. I’m not ready to accept the prospect of my children having a worse childhood than I did.

I’m guessing you’re not willing to accept it, either.
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Posted in Solutions |

No Plans? No Problem!

Published on January 19, 2012 by Mike Lanza

One recent weekend, the boys went all around the neighborhood, collecting leaves and making a huge leaf pile on our street. They *really* got into it!

The last couple of weekends, my family’s had a totally empty schedule – no sports games, birthday parties, play dates, etc. In fact, we didn’t even make a plan to go anywhere like a zoo or park.

So, every morning, we woke up without anything in particular to do. When my wife was in charge, she came up with an idea of where to take our boys (7, 4, and 2) and she loaded them into the minivan. However, when I was in charge, our boys and I wandered around our yard and neighborhood.

Sounds boring, eh?

Actually, we weren’t bored at all. In fact, two of those days were really fantastic, one even qualifying as one of those cherished days I’ll remember the rest of my life.
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Posted in Bright Spots, Solutions |

Motivation Happens

Published on January 10, 2012 by Mike Lanza

Here was Marco last night, curled up with his current book, "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules."

Some kids are “self-starters,” but Marco’s not. That’s what I thought two years ago, when he was 5.

Those other kids, the “exceptional ones,” have their own interests and passionately pursue them on their own. On the other hand, Marco will probably always need to be guided, force-fed.

Today, I can see that I was dead wrong, I’m happy to say.

At 7, he’s an independent reader. He reads on his own for at least 15 minutes a night, and he recently completed his first long book on his own, a 217-pager called Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Now, he’s on the second Wimpy Kid book, and we have to force him to put it down to go to bed every night. He’s that into it.
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Posted in Bright Spots, Solutions |

Childhood Without the Excitement of Christmas Gifts

Published on December 20, 2011 by Mike Lanza

That's me one Christmas morning about 40 years ago with my new UHaul truck. I'm sure I got the idea to ask for it from some TV commercial.

Christmas isn’t a very big deal for my kids. For them it’s about having a tree in the house, taking some time off of school, and attending a large family gathering on Christmas day.

We don’t really talk about Christmas gifts. No, we don’t do Santa here. Over the past two weeks, my wife and I have given our kids a few gifts, rather than waiting for Christmas day. We gave Nico (4) roller blades and pads, we gave Marco (7) a skateboard, and we gave Nico and Leo (2) some super-sized (6-notch!) Lincoln Logs for building huge log cabins.

Because we don’t preannounce gifts, our kids are usually surprised and very happy when they receive them. They appreciate them. They’re thankful.
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Posted in Bright Spots |

Retail Shops Are Part of Marco’s Village

Published on December 14, 2011 by Mike Lanza

Christian is about to fix Marco's bike, at right. Marco, left, asked a lot of questions.

Marco (7) walked into our local bike shop, Menlo Velo, through the back door, with his bike today. Christian, an employee there, said, “Hi, Marco!” as soon as he walked in. I got there first and was waiting for him. You see, I had him ride from our house to there to meet me.

I asked Christian to reattach a part for the speedometer we bought there a few months back. He grabbed Marco’s bike and started working on it immediately without asking for a receipt. We hung out in the repair area next to Christian, and Marco peppered him with questions. We hardly ever venture past the front counter when we visit there.

Clearly, Menlo Velo is now part of Marco’s Village, an area which I first wrote about a year ago that grows as Marco matures. It’s a place where he can go on his own and feel comfortable. The people there know and like him, and vice-versa. He’s very comfortable getting there on his own.
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Posted in Neighborhood, Solutions |

I’m not interested in the suburbs. The suburbs bore me.

Published on December 5, 2011 by Mike Lanza

Back in his law school days, he said that he had no interest in suburbs. Let's hope he's matured his view since then.


Barack Obama said this back in 1990 as a 28-year-old law school student at Harvard. This doesn’t bother me. I’ll bet most twentysomething yuppies would agree. Cities are so much more alive and hip to these folks. I probably said something like that myself when I was in my twenties.

Then, we get married and have kids, and suddenly most of us notice how unaccommodating our urban environments are for kids. We notice the crappy schools for the first time. We start to pay a lot more attention to the crime reports in our neighborhoods. We lament the fact that we hardly see children outside in our neighborhoods having fun.

So, many of us leave our hip urban enclaves for the boring suburbs. My wife and I left San Francisco for the suburbs of the Peninsula back in 2006 when Marco, our oldest, was 1-1/2. At least half of our San Francisco friends with young kids did the same. San Francisco’s proportion of population under 18, 14%, is one of the lowest in the United States (see this article). New York’s is 15%. By comparison, the national average is 24%.
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Posted in The Problem |

Thanks, Kids, for a Wonderful Life

Published on November 24, 2011 by Mike Lanza

Every weeknight of my life, a big thrill runs through my body as I approach my house. Inside are three young kids (7, 4, and 2) and a wife who love me. I love them back, more than I ever could have imagined as a single guy a decade ago.

We laugh and we kiss and we hug, every single day.

My in-laws come by my house every day. I thank them every chance I get for being loving grandparents to my kids. We don’t always see eye-to-eye, but our petty disagreements are so trivial compared to our shared love for our kids.

I see neighbors and school friends I care about every day, too. We smile and we chat. Sure, I sometimes see people I’m not wild about, but that’s not a big deal.

I don’t have my own life anymore. Neither does my wife, and neither do my in-laws. It’s all about our kids.
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Posted in Bright Spots |

Should Kids Work Like Adults, Or Should Adults Play Like Kids?

Published on November 18, 2011 by Mike Lanza

In Drive, Daniel Pink claims workers will be more productive if they get intrinsic, not extrinsic, rewards. In other words, they need to integrate play into their work.


Kids’ lives are fun. They play.

Adults’ lives are serious. We work. We have responsibilities.

Many psychologists and psychiatrists question this widely-held dichotomy. They think that kids should play a lot and continue to play into adulthood.

They claim that the most likely path toward a successful, happy life – a life in which one can have his cake and eat it too – is guided by intrinsic motivation. You may have heard of the concept of euphoric “flow” experiences. These are intense moments of intrinsic motivation applied toward a goal, and they combine extreme happiness with great accomplishment. See the book Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly.

People who are intrinsically motivated do things because they want to, not because someone else expects them to. In general, they accomplish more than people who are motivated by external forces (like bosses and parents and rules), and they’re healthier and happier. In his book, Drive, Daniel Pink writes about how employers can get the most out of their employees by finding ways to motivate them intrinsically.
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Posted in The Problem |

Fun: 600, Injuries: 0

Published on November 9, 2011 by Mike Lanza


Marco (7) jumps from the playhouse to the trampoline. He started this before he turned 6. Then, a few months later, he started jumping from that roof up there. No sweat...

My kids and neighbor kids have jumped on our in-ground trampoline practically every day since we installed it over 600 days ago. I mean, they really jump.

They do seat bounces and knee bounces and stomach bounces. They try forward and backward flips. They jump over things. They jump from the playhouse rails three feet high and four feet away. A few have even jumped from the playhouse roof, nine feet high and four feet away!

And no one has gotten an injury that lasted more than a couple minutes of crying. No blood. No broken bones. No strained ligaments or concussions. Every kid who’s ever jumped here has left in perfect health. They often cry when they leave, but that’s not because they’re in physical pain.

So, are we just incredibly lucky? No, I don’t think so. Sure, perhaps we’re a bit lucky, just like you are every time you drive your kids in a car and don’t get into a serious injury accident.
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Posted in Bright Spots | Tagged |

Frank the Builder Builds Community

Published on November 8, 2011 by Mike Lanza

Frank Shields is a builder, in more ways than one.

He’s largely responsible for building an extraordinary culture on his block over the past twenty plus years using a combination of friendliness, fearlessness, wood, nails, a power saw, and Visqueen.

Frank zooms down the Dibble Avenue water slide thanks to a lot of wet Visqueen.


You see, when he’s away from his block working, Frank’s a contractor, and “Visqueen” is one of the common tools of his trade.

I’d never heard of it when I first talked to Frank about his Dibble Avenue block, between 75th and 77th in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle.

“Uh. . . Vis-uhhh. Do you mean plastic?” I asked.

“Yeah, OK, plastic.” Frank replied.

It turns out that Visqueen, otherwise known as polyethylene, is pretty darned important to the vitality of Dibble Avenue. You see, Frank orchestrates the building of a water slide for a two-day festival on Dibble every August, called “Nibble at Dibble.”
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Posted in Bright Spots, Neighborhood | Tagged , , , , |
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