I was at the mall today and looked at the play pit, where kids can ‘play’.
Everything is shiny, carpeted, and safe. Kids aren’t allowed to wear shoes so they don’t hurt each other. No food is allowed.
In this controlled environment, kids just have fun. They would have to try really hard to scrape their knees or bang their heads.
So, they won’t learn that if you aren’t careful you get hurt.
When they join sports teams for little kids, there will be no winners or losers. Everyone will get a trophy and everyone knows the trophy is meaningless. Parents are very involved in these games and the rules are all established.
Some school playgrounds have rules to prevent kids from running, so they don’t get hurt.
They never get to live at full speed, running as fast as they can, chasing each other. They can’t feel the joy of winning, or the pain of losing.
It’s time to let kids be kids. Kids need age appropriate opportunities to be kids. When we were kids we went outdoors. We weren’t always nice to each other, but physical violence was very rare, perhaps non-existent. Some kids got picked on, every time. We played games. We made rules and argued. There were winners and losers. Occasionally, someone would get hurt, usually not seriously, but we learned to play so most of the time everyone was okay. If you didn’t want to play the way everyone else did, you could leave.
We felt the thrill of playing full tilt, of running as fast as we could. We felt the disappointment of losing, the frustration of being cheated and the greatness of victory, however small.
At the bus stop no parents waited. The older kids knew to make sure the younger ones got on the bus, even if they weren’t brothers and sisters. No one told us this, we knew because when we were small, someone did it for us.
When we were old enough, we ventured out of the neighborhood, many times alone on a bike. We knew that if anything bad happened, it was our own fault. We knew our parents weren’t there at that moment, that we had to be careful and take responsibility for ourselves.
We knew our parents loved us, but we also owned our world. There were leaders, losers, underdogs and heroes, and it was real because we created it and lived in it. Today’s children are so shielded from harm and risk they can’t live.