Girls and Boys Come Out to Play
Thursday 27th of February 2014 | Category: Opinion | Written by: Leoarna MathiasHalf term last week saw, in our little part of the world, the sun came out – at last. The kids and I managed to have a couple of days that were plan-free, thus allowing them to bimble about outside. Donned in waterproof dungarees and welly boots, they made mud pies, fashioned ‘bird’s nests’ from grass and twigs, splashed about in puddles and wore themselves out bouncing on the trampoline.
The nature of modern children’s play, and their access to unstructured free time in the fresh air in particular, has become something of a political hot potato of late. And for good reason. Many modern parents have a feeling in their gut that their children’s play times are of a different order to the ones they experienced themselves. Film maker David Bond went one step further, and made a film examining how much play had changed from his grandparent’s generation to his children’s, via his own. He charted the demise of the time children are afforded to simply ‘be’ in the 21st century, as they are prevented from playing outside by concerns about traffic and fear of strangers, and are instead ferried from one adult-directed activity to another.
A close friend of mine tells a story of how her mother, now in her late 70s, was, as a 3 year old, sent out the door some mornings with her two not-much-older sisters, and told not to return until tea time. The very idea of this might seem shocking to us now. Professor David Whitbread of the Faculty of Education at Cambridge University noted, in a recent article in The Telegraph, that;
I remember as a child myself, when it was the school holidays, being sent off in the morning with a lunch box and a bottle of juice, and being told to be home for tea. I played all day outdoors with the local kids from the estate, in the park or in a local field, and learnt to be resilient, to get on with others, and to think for myself.
I, too, have my own memories of hanging out in my neighbour’s paddling pool, or whizzing down the alley, behind the row of houses I grew up in, on my skateboard. I reminisced about those days when I read this piece, also in The Telegraph, about the attempts to reintroduce the concept of Play Streets to British towns and cities. An Act of Parliament in 1938 allowed communities to close their streets to traffic for periods of time for the purpose of letting children play. By 1963 there were 750 designated play streets in the UK, but by the 1980s they had all but disappeared. Then in 2011, parents in Bristol attempted to re-invigorate the idea, and the movement is growing. There are other positive moves afoot too, such as the growth of the Forest School movement in schools and pre-schools across the land. You can find out more here.
So, parents of Britain, now that we finally have a break in the weather, I call upon you to get your kids outside and let them play. You’ll be helping them get their daily dose of Vitamin D (the lack of which in our population has the potential to cause real health problems) and giving them skills for life. And there’ll be nothing stopping you from taking a cup of tea outside and watching them, benefitting you too.
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