By Mark Wineka
mwineka@salisburypost.com
This summer I was walking on the Salisbury greenway when I ran into some old friends.
I seldom see the couple anymore, and I couldn’t believe how big their two middle school-aged daughters were.
Their mother was happy to see them speed off well ahead of our walking pace. They needed to be outside, letting off some steam, she said. At home, they seemed to prefer staying inside, she complained.
Well, this got me started. Remember the days, I asked, when kids knew how to play outside without any adult supervision.
When we were young, I said from my highest horse, our parents didn’t fret constantly about where we were or what we were doing. In the summer, I could be gone all day, riding my bike through town, visiting friends’ houses or just staying at home alone, finding stuff to do.
My greenway walking buddies nodded in agreement. Their childhoods had been much the same, they said.
If we had enough bodies, we kids figured out how to organize football, basketball or baseball games. We didn’t need an umpire or referee. We made our own calls and decisions, with plenty of debate at times, but we still managed to reach a ruling and keep things going.
We chose sides, kept score, laid out boundaries, made ground rules, and any bruised feelings were something to be corrected with the next recess, the next game.
Playing among ourselves promoted things such as decision-making, leadership, responsibility, dealing with mistakes and figuring out how to get along with people.
Today, children’s activities have to be organized, supervised and sugarcoated by adults so that everybody wins, everybody gets a trophy, everybody gets a snack and everybody goes home in the mini-van or SUV.
If you see more than two kids together somewhere these days without any adults around, you assume they’re part of a gang.
As a kid, I can’t ever recall having a fear that some stranger would drive up and snatch me or any of my friends.
Amber Alerts never would have worked back then, because a lot of parents didn’t know exactly where their children were and ó I have to say ó worried little about it. Technically, we were all missing.
The kids were in the neighborhood, on the sandlot, down at the store, in the park, at the swimming pool, by the creek, out in the yard or up in the treehouse.
And those general locations were good enough for our parents and grandparents.
When did all this change? When did we start overparenting and scheduling every activity for our children?
When did fear invade us so much that we began overprotecting them? When did we turn baby-sitting over to television, laptops, iPhones, iPods and video games?
Believe it or not, there’s a national environmental initiative called No Child Left Inside, aimed at getting children outdoors and away from all the gadgets. Will they know what to do once they get out there, and will parents leave them alone to figure it out?
I have my doubts.
Time magazine has devoted its most recent cover story to “The Case Against Over-Parenting.” I noted one passage saying that studies reinforce the importance of play “as an essential protein in a child’s emotional diet.” I also liked this observation:
“Many educators have been searching for ways to tell parents when to back off. It’s a tricky line to walk, since studies link parents’ engagement in a child’s education to better grades, higher test scores, less substance abuse and better college outcomes … The challenge is helping parents know when they are crossing the line.”
My own kids are grown now, but my wife and I were probably as guilty as anyone of “managing” a lot of what they did. We probably were hovering, helicopter parents at times.
I regret some of that. I think there’s a lot of value in child’s play.
Especially when adults keep their noses out of it.