Articles

Giving Freedom Incrementally

2010-08-30T18:43:00Z

“How is it that you feel so comfortable letting Marco (6) be in your front yard without your watching?”

A mom asked me this question recently. It really froze me. I mean, I hadn’t really thought about how we had become comfortable giving him so much freedom.

Marco regularly roams our front yard and neighbors’ front yards on his own. I wrote an article recently about Marco’s “home range” - i.e. the range he regularly and comfortably inhabits every day. For most kids, this range is limited to the walls of their house, but Marco and my middle son, Nico, regularly hang out beyond …

Do Your Jobs, Parents!!!

2010-08-30T07:41:00Z

A large proportion of twenty-somethings of today aren’t fully responsible adults yet. They often live with their parents because they don’t have sufficient finances or life skills (e.g. cooking, maintaining a home, etc.). They have a difficult time focusing on their careers, changing jobs more rapidly than ever. They avoid long-term romantic relationships and all that goes along with them, most notably children.

In addition, depression among twenty-somethings has reached epidemic levels. In one study, over 11% of young adults aged 18-24 in 2001-2002 were found to have had depressive …

Camp Yale Epilogue

2010-08-24T01:01:00Z

Camp Yale was quite a success. On days 4 and 5 we continued the positive momentum of the first three days with trampoline lessons, Roxaboxen house building in our creek bed, and more mosaic making, plus lots and lots of wild free play.

So, what’s the lasting legacy of Camp Yale 2010? I’ve identified two:

Camp Yale, Day 3

2010-08-19T01:38:00Z

For the first half of today, the kids engaged in wild free play once again. They just can’t get enough of that. They have settled on three main centers of play: the Slotwood house in our driveway, the trampoline in our back yard, and the playhouse in our back yard. Also, kids frequently come to the picnic table in the front yard to grab snacks or a cup of water.

Then, my artist friend Jaying Wang helped our kids make mosaics - one big one to put on our fence, and a “stepping stone” for each kid to take home. The big one is a design inspired by the book Roxaboxen depicting the play …

Camp Yale, Day 2

2010-08-17T22:50:00Z

We started our day by walking to the San Francisquito Creek bed close to our house, which is totally dry this time of year. Paul Heiple of Acterra led a lively discussion of the creek. He taught us things like where the creek water comes from, what affects the erosion of the creek bank, what happens when the creek floods, what kinds of rocks we find there, and what kinds of plants we find there.

After Paul’s talk, the kids foraged and climbed the banks a bit, then they collected rocks for painting, and we went back to my yard (Camp Yale headquarters). There, some kids painted rocks, …

Camp Yale, Day 1

2010-08-17T06:00:00Z

[Note: For the second consecutive year, I’m running a neighborhood summer camp at my house on Yale Road in Menlo Park, CA. Below are notes from our first day.]

Fellow Yale Roader and magician Hugh McDonald mesmerized us with his magic tricks, and he taught the kids a few, too. I got a great testimonial from a mom this evening: “My kids had a great time at Camp Yale today. Donny in particular is just raving about it. He loved Hugh. He is practicing his magic act with the coin to show his dad tonight ( I already saw it!!).”

Before and after Hugh’s show, the 12 attendees, ages …

Quality Time With Kids

2010-08-14T07:15:00Z

Children and parents differ sharply as to what is quality time spent between them, according to The National KidsDay Meaningful Time Survey, conducted by Boys & Girls Clubs of America in 2002.

In essence, the survey shows that, while parents think that instructive time spent with children is quality time (the survey calls this “meaningful time"), children strongly prefer fun time. Children prefer fun time to instructive time by a margin of 49% to 35%, while parents prefer instructive time by a margin of 62% to 35%. Parents tend to want to enrich their parenting experience, while children …

It Takes a Street to Raise Jacob

2010-08-06T20:29:00Z

Jacob rolled on his scooter alongside Andrew. He climbed on to a chair to watch other kids play a board game. He grabbed a cup of water and drank it. He walked over to a woman and got a hug. He hopped on his scooter again.

This went on for a couple of hours.

“Is anyone watching Jacob?” I asked Hetty Fox, matriarch of the Lyman Place play street.

“Uh,” she scanned around for a moment. “No, not right now. But his cousin Andrew is right there, and everyone else here knows him, too. Besides, he has lots of aunts and uncles and cousins who live right here on the street, as well as …

A Player’s High

2010-07-31T00:05:00Z

Have you ever run a long distance and felt a “runner’s high?” For me, it’s always kicked in at about five miles or forty minutes. At that point, I get a feeling of euphoria, and the feeling of any little aches and pains goes away. If I run less, I don’t get that feeling. It’s not as if, if I run two-and-a-half miles instead of five, I get 50% of a runner’s high. I get 0%. Nothing.

I’ve come to realize that children at play can achieve something like a runner’s high when they play, which I’ll call a “player’s high.” Kids achieve a sort of euphoria, but the most noticeable thing to …

Children, Nature, and Neighborhoods

2010-07-23T21:24:00Z

Much has been written about the deep, positive impact that exposure to nature can have on children. I agree. Recently, I’ve seen with my own eyes how vital a relationship with nature can be for children.

However, through this experience I’ve come to realize that the discussions of children and nature have largely failed to address how to best include nature into children’s lives.

I’ve come to realize that two factors are crucial to the magical experience my two older boys (6 and 2-1/2) have had:

A Society of Kids in the Woods

2010-07-17T01:31:00Z

I’ve been looking forward to this moment for six years, ever since my first son was born, when I vowed that I would not give my children a childhood full of screen time inside the house and packed schedules outside.

Just in the last week, I’ve helped a group of five neighbor kids (ages 8, 6-1/2, 6, 4-1/2, and 2-1/2), including two of my own, create a new society of their own. They’ve created their own hangout - a stylized tree fort - and their own culture in a creek bed by our house. They go there for hours at a time and are totally autonomous, with an adult watching passively from a …

Do Stressed-Out Childhoods = Bright Futures?

2010-07-09T20:32:00Z

Numerous studies show that being a parent makes people unhappy. Their kids are unhappy, too - youth and teenage depression has increased significantly in recent decades. In addition, parents are spending more time than ever with their kids, even though they’re also working more than ever.

What the heck is going on? How is all this connected? The root, many experts believe, is the highly stressful, busy lifestyle that parents are forcing on their children. In their paper, The Rug Rat Race, Garey and Valerie Ramey claim that the increase is largely due to parents’ quest to get their …

Investing in Kids’ Play

2010-06-30T20:23:00Z

I just made a $3,000 investment in a solution to the kids’ neighborhood play problem last week. I couldn’t be more pleased.

The recipient is The New York Kids Foundation, which runs a one-block long “play street” on Lyman Place in the South Bronx, one of the poorest places in the United States. The head of the Foundation, Hetty Fox, was born and raised on that street. She left there to teach at a university in Southern California in the 1960s, but she came back to her family home on Lyman Place in 1970.

She returned exactly when her neighborhood needed her most. In the decade of …

Streets are for Kids, Too!

2010-06-19T01:59:00Z

“Car! Car! C-A-R! Stick your head in a jelly jar!”

“Hey! Whattya think? This is a road?”

When I was a kid, we used to chant these sayings at cars when they drove through our sports field, which also served as a road for cars. When a car would first appear, someone would yell “CAR!”, but all of us didn’t always run off the road quickly. The older among us would often stand there and glare at the car for a few seconds before walking off, as if to say, “OK, I’ll let you pass through my sports field.”

One day, we set up a series of chairs with hockey sticks laying across them and a sign …

Children’s Wild Fun: Do You Crave it or Avoid it?

2010-06-14T23:26:01Z

I discovered something very important today.

You see, I absolutely crave the sights and sounds of children having wild fun. You know - lots of screaming and laughing and running. Spontaneous. No authority, on the verge of getting out of control. Teetering on the edge between total joy and danger.

In fact, I’ve done a lot to insure that children around me, including my three boys, get to experience this regularly. Last year, I renovated my front and back yards to make them into a neighborhood hangout, and earlier this year I added a trampoline to the back yard. In addition, I go …