Pick-Up Touch Football!

Pick-up touch football game isn’t completely gone.  At my son’s elementary school (Hillcrest) in Oakland, it’s been a busy year for recess and after school touch football among the fourth graders.  The year started with lots of excitement about playing football during recess.  Soon I started hearing about some of the issues/problems:  they couldn’t agree on the rules, ‘Jimmy’ hogged the ball all the time, ‘Sammy’ was terrible and no one ever picked him.  I chuckled a little at these traumatic events, but was inwardly so pleased that the boys had to deal, mostly by themselves, with these issues.

Continued on Playborhood Berkeley…

• by Scott Kleinman

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The Freedom and Fun of Forts

For some children recess provides the most important reason to come to school. With its promise of games of chase and tag, clique-bound conversations, solitary wandering and exploration, pretend and war play, recess provides reliable access to a scarce resource of immense value in the lives of children: spontaneous self-direction. 

But at one school in Massachusetts, recess meant just one thing for many children: time to work and play on their forts.

Continued on Playborhood Berkeley…

• by Mark Powell

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Playborhood Local Site Launched for Berkeley

Playborhood launched the Playborhood Berkeley (CA) site today!  This site is a collaborative effort of area residents Tracey Taylor, Gina Moreland, Mark Powell, and Sara Sloan, among others.

Coupled with Playborhood Palo Alto / Menlo Park, this news means we have the areas around the San Francisco Bay Area’s two elite universities covered.  Now, we need to start some Playborhood Local sites between these two Bay Area communities!

Note that, like the Palo Alto / Menlo Park site, this Berkeley site has Neighborhood Reviews.  You can access these individually by clicking on home icons on the map above, but to see a list of all homes for sale and the Neighborhood Reviews we have, click on the “Neighborhood Reviews” link below the map. 

Note that, since we’re just launching this feature, we need people to submit neighborhood reviews!  Do you know about specific neighborhoods where children play outside?  Is there a home for sale there?  HELP US OUT AND SUBMIT A REVIEW OR TWO!!!

• by Mike Lanza
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Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques IV: Visit the Neighborhood and Talk to Neighbors

[NOTE:  This the last in a series of four articles on Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques.  The first article is an introduction to the topic, the second is about researching neighborhood reputations, and the third describes how I research online information about neighbors of a house for sale.]

If the larger neighborhood reputation and my online searching give me a pretty decent feeling about the immediate neighborhood around a house, I’ll visit there to look around and talk to neighbors.  After all, for getting a feeling for a neighborhood, there’s no substitute for talking to neighbors in person and seeing what they actually do.

I’ve found that the best time to go - i.e. the best time to see kids play outside - is late afternoon, between 4 and 5:30, any day.  I’ll go earlier during the winter, when the sun goes down early, and perhaps a bit later during the longest and hottest days of summer.  Nothing is a better indicator of the potential of your kids playing in a neighborhood than seeing kids your kids’ ages playing there when you visit.  So, as soon as I see this, without looking any further, the house becomes a candidate for purchase.

Continued on Playborhood Palo Alto / Menlo Park…

• by Mike Lanza

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Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques III: Research Neighbors Online

[NOTE:  This the third in a series of four articles on Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques.  The first article is an introduction to the topic, the second is about researching neighborhood reputations, and the fourth discusses what to look for and do when visiting a neighborhood around a home for sale.]

Because driving to a house for sale and nosing around there takes a lot of time, I search publicly available online information on close neighbors first to get some indication of whether kids my kids’ ages might be living there.  After all, from kids’ point of view, preschoolers in particular, next-door neighbors are by far the most important, so if I can find that at least one kid my kids’ ages lives next-door, that makes it likely that I’ll spend the time to visit the house and neighborhood to get more information.

Be forewarned: the methods I describe here seem invasive, but I’m only searching for publicly available information, and I’m doing it for a noble cause - to find neighborhood playmates for my kids.

So here’s what I do:

Continued on Playborhood Palo Alto / Menlo Park…

• by Mike Lanza

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Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques II: Research Neighborhood Reputations

[NOTE:  This the second in a series of four articles on Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques.  The first article is an introduction to the topic, the third article is about researching neighbors online, and the fourth article discusses what to look for and do when visiting a neighborhood around a home for sale.]

Why is researching neighborhood reputations a “guerilla Playborhood hunting technique?” Isn’t this something everyone does?

Well, as it turns out, accurate neighborhood reputations are not easy to find, so doing a good job of this requires some active research.  In The Hubris of Neighborhood Profiles I wrote last year about how neighborhood guides, or at least the one for Palo Alto compiled by the Palo Alto Weekly, are not critical enough.  Every neighborhood gets a great review.

I also find that realtors’ pronouncements about neighborhoods are too uniformly rosy.  Some good realtors will give you some useful critical information, but on the whole, realtors will oversell neighborhoods even more than they oversell houses. 

In addition, I’ve found that parents’ casual comments about the quality of kids’ lives in a neighborhood aren’t very useful.  They almost always say wherever they live is “great” for their kids.  In order to get a useful information, you need to ask very specific questions.

Continued on Playborhood Palo Alto / Menlo Park…

• by Mike Lanza

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Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques I: Introduction

[NOTE:  This the first in a series of four articles on Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques.  The second article is about researching neighborhood reputations, the third article is about researching neighbors online, and the fourth article discusses what to look for and do when visiting a neighborhood around a home for sale.]

My wife and I have made “Neighborhood for Kids” - i.e. a Playborhood - our #1 criterion in searching for a home in Palo Alto and Menlo Park.  Think about that for a moment.  It makes searching for a house extremely difficult, given the information that the real estate industry provides us.

Basically, all that stuff other than price that we see on all the real estate sites and the newspapers is useless to us before we find a house in a neighborhood we like.  Architectural style?  Whatever.  Bedrooms, baths, and square footage?  All that may be important, but it’s *secondary*.  None of these things can give our kids a good life like a Playborhood can.

Continued on Playborhood Palo Alto / Menlo Park…

• by Mike Lanza

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A Reggio-Emilia Preschool, Italian-Style (or why Bing Nursery School may not be perfect…)

[EDITOR’S NOTE: I’ve been out of it for two weeks.  I had hip resurfacing surgery back on March 26, then I was swamped working on the video below.  I’m doing very well now, limping but doing just about everything again.  I’m sorry for the hiatus, but I’m back, stronger (and more cantankerous) than ever...]

I just shot and edited the video below about La Piccola Scuola Italiana (LPSI), a wonderful Reggio-Emilia inspired preschool in San Francisco.  I am very happy with my son’s preschool, Bing Nursery School, which is one of the most prestigious, sought-after nursery schools in the US.  However, I prefer LPSI.  Unfortunately, we live in Palo Alto, CA, 40 minutes away from LPSI.

Why do I prefer LPSI to Bing?

Continued on Playborhood Palo Alto / Menlo Park…

• by Mike Lanza

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Picking a Preschool:  Play-based vs. Structured is One Choice, But There are Many More

A lot can be written about finding the right school for your child - public vs. private, secular vs. religious, coop vs. traditional, and of course play-based vs. structured.  There’s a wide spectrum in all of those areas plus other specialized programs, and where I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, the variety of options can be overwhelming.  But let’s say, for the sake of simplification that we’re searching for a largely play-based environment for our children during their early years.  What then?

Before my husband and I decided to try for a baby, I naively scoffed at new parents fretting about where to send their kids to school; I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about - and why on earth was it such a big deal to get kids into “the right preschool”?  Then a couple of years later, we made our decision to start a family, I soon became pregnant, and lo and behold, people were already warning me: “Have you gotten on any waiting lists yet?” They said, with obvious tension in their voices.  I shrugged in reply.  “You really should,” they responded.

Continued on Playborhood Palo Alto / Menlo Park

• by Sarah Granger

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Warm and Fuzzies for Bill and Hillary as Kids

Boyyyy, this has been a long and bruising Democratic presidential primary, and it’s far from over!  I think we all could use an excuse to feel some warm and fuzzies about Bill and Hillary.  After all, Hillary isn’t really a monster, is she?  And Bill isn’t really a racist, is he?

If you feel this way, I have a book for you to read:  The Games We Played: A Celebration of Childhood and Imagination is a wonderful compilation of childhood stories of famous people.  The editor, Steven Cohen, is a former Clinton Administration press aide, so he was able to get Bill and Hillary Clinton to contribute their stories.  All these stories - not just Bill and Hillary’s - are a wonderful, nostalgic read.

• by Mike Lanza
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The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

I start a fair number of books, but I finish very few of them.  However, I wished The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid would never end.  In fact, if I could have transported myself into the world of that book, I would have.  It’s that compelling and entertaining.

Author Bill Bryson’s classic is a laugh-out-loud memoir of his boyhood in the 1950s and 60s in Des Moines, Iowa.  Like the TV show The Wonder Years, it’s a venerable anthem to that “Golden Age” of childhood in America.  Toward the beginning of the book, Bryson writes:

“. . . kids were always outdoors - I knew kids who were pushed out the door at eight in the morning and not allowed back in until five unless they were on fire or actively bleeding - and they were always looking for something to do.  If you stood on any corner with a bike - any corner anywhere - more than a hundred children, many of whom you had never seen before, would appear and ask you where you were going.” (p. 36)

• by Mike Lanza
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Hot Wheels on the Sidewalk!

My son Marco and I have been having the time of our lives ever since our first eBay shipment of Hot Wheels track arrived a few days ago. 

I decided to get him the same kind of track that I got back around 1970 rather than the track Mattel sells today.  Perhaps this is just for sentimental reasons, but I have another rationale:  the old sets are just track and other parts that can be configured in myriad ways.  The new sets have departed from the concept of modular parts, and are more like kits.  This is similar to the change in Lego over the past few decades.

Continued on Playborhood Palo Alto / Menlo Park

• by Mike Lanza

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Being a Weirdo Family - Is It Worth It?

Some family friends who are also neighbors came to our house last night for dinner.  We had a great time, but I had a slightly sad feeling at the end when they left.  You see, I think I alienated them a bit. 

At some point in our conversation, I expressed my desire that our young kids - 3-1/2 and 4 months - spend a lot of time playing in their neighborhoods when they grow up, rather than having scheduled activities every day.  My friends’ son, an 11-year-old boy who I’ll call ‘Billy,’ replied, “But that’s me!” It certainly is.  Billy has at least one sports team practice or game every day, so that the family rarely has dinner together at what one would normally consider dinner time.  “I never hang out with anyone in our neighborhood.  I’m either at practices, games, or play dates all the time.”

Don’t get me wrong:  Billy’s a great kid - as smart and polite as could be - but I don’t want his life for my kids.  In fact, I don’t want the life I see 90%+ of kids having.  Articulating that was a bit uncomfortable for me. 

• by Mike Lanza
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The Problems of Boys and the Demise of Independent Play

Boys aren’t doing very well when compared to girls these days.  Far fewer boys go to college (42% vs. 58%), twice as many boys have been diagnosed with attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder or a learning disability, and two times as many eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-old males abuse alcohol as do females of the same age.  The list could go on (see this article for more), but the fact remains that boys of all racial and socio-economic backgrounds are doing worse than their female counterparts.

Theories abound as to why this is the case.  Some people point to changes in the education system that make school less compatible with boys’ nature.  Others point to all the special help and attention that girls have been getting over the past few decades. 

I have my own theory to explain at least part of the problem.  I contend that the sharp decrease in independent children’s play that has occurred in the past few decades has had a larger negative impact on boys than girls.  In decades past, large groups of boys pulled off major feats of social organization and competitive struggle on a daily basis through their self-organized games.  Today, boys play alone or in very small groups, or they participate in sports games administered by adults.

• by Mike Lanza
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Social Class and Neighborliness

The neighborhoods with the nicest homes in Palo Alto and Menlo Park (CA) are very quiet.  Very, very quiet.  I’m talking almost-never-talk-to-your-neighbor quiet.  So, they’re not Playborhoods (i.e. neighborhoods where kids go outside and play), regardless of whether kids live there or not.

That’s the conclusion my wife and I have come to, by and large, after two plus years of house hunting here. 

Of course, we want a house in a Playborhood, and as for the house. we would like lots of interior space - at least 3000 square feet.  We’ve discovered that finding both of these things is nearly impossible.  We’re square pegs trying to fit into a round hole.

The fact is that, overall, the owners of these 2+ million dollar homes are not very “neighborly,” at least when they’re compared to owners in other neighborhoods with much less expensive homes.

Continued on Playborhood Palo Alto / Menlo Park

• by Mike Lanza

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