<p>Saw this today on cnn.com. Very thought provoking.</p>
<p>Parents</a>, why are you pushing your kids? - CNN.com</p>
<p>I do miss the days when kids could just play. My best memories were the impromptu dodgeball and softball games as we would gather everyone and head to the school playground. Or the hours we would spend wandering around the neighborhood, and our parents had no idea where we were, until we showed up for dinner.</p>
<p>A large proportion of today’s kids have both parents working full-time, which means that the kids need to be in some sort of organized program in the afternoons after school gets out and all day on weekdays in the summer.</p>
<p>So if your kid is home, there may not be many kids available to play with. You can’t gather everyone and wander around the neighborhood or head to the playground because everyone is in after-school care or day camp.</p>
<p>I believe it’s all tied into the sensationalizing and reporting of child abductions. Do we have more abductions these days; I think not. Do we worry more about it, yes. Do we hear about every one in every state and even other countries; Yes. There were creepy people when we grew up, but everyone didn’t see the boogie man behind every tree. Kids played outside until the street light came on. Kids walked to their friend’s house on the next street. Kids walked or rode bikes to school, playgrounds, stores, etc. </p>
<p>Now, parents drive their kids everywhere and don’t allow them the freedom to be kids. It’s too bad, really. That’s why there are play dates, and organized everything. My DS loved to ride his bike and I let him ride it to school (no busy streets–only residential all the way to school). His was often the ONLY bike in the rack, sometimes there was one or two others. How many bikes were in the racks at your elementary (and even high) school? Parents on my street, and even in closer neighborhoods to the school all drove their kids to and from school. </p>
<p>Heck, I remember my brother riding his bike 25 miles to a lake to fish. Remember paper routes? Papers used to be delivered by kids. I can’t remember the last time I had a kid deliver a paper. They are delivered by adults in vehicles. </p>
<p>Times have changed. It’s great to have all the opportunities, but you have to listen to what your kids want and need. I love when the kids all go out and play catch or hoops in the neighborhood with whoever is outside.</p>
<p>and gas was .29 cents a gallon and nobody paid for water and there were only 3 channels on TV and movies cost a buck. Times change, people (and kids) adapt. </p>
<p>Every generation has its apocalypse. The Cuban missile crisis, the cold war, nuclear fall out drills (remember hiding under the desk!) gas lines in the 70’s. Everything will be alright.</p>
<p>"… you have to listen to what your kids want and need."</p>
<p>… need. Ah, that’s where it gets sticky, doesn’t it. I have a nephew who gets a lot of time to play. In fact it appears that play is all he does. “The kid did better in the Spring. He even got a B.” Harvard and MIT are apparently off the application list, but UMichigan OOS is still there. “I’ll get in, my SAT was over 1200.” </p>
<p>Is more “play time” really what this kid needs?</p>
<p>NewHope33: actually is play time all that bad? Is it the end of the world if Harvard if off the application list? maybe the best thing for him is to aim lower and be more content. </p>
<p>There are so many of us that are doing well in life without having an Ivy education, and 2400 SAT scores. The world is full of ‘C’ people, and make up the backbone of our society. Not all bad, really.</p>
<p>The kids in my neighborhood play at least 1-3 hours every weeknight during the summer. We have soccer games basketball, flash tag and “ditch” until the parents call them in for dinner. Sure we used to play all day like that in the summer, but with parents working, most kids are still having fun in summer activities. </p>
<p>It is nice to have a mix. but I think my kid ended up having more fun at the day camps he went to in the summer. He certainly did better art projects.</p>
<p>What does the kid want to do in life and is it realistic are two good questions. Use your discernment. He doesn’t have to go to Harvard or MIT… Will he love what he is doing?
It’s kind of hard to describe, but it often comes down to the kid. Making him continue working on his black belt or level 10 piano when he doesn’t want to do it anymore I don’t agree with. Yes it can be a waste of time and money to quit, but it’d be even more of a waste to continue.</p>
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<p>Lots of kids who grew up in the 1980’s and '90s like yours truly also had both parents working full-time or more and had no money/time to send us off to many organized activities common among upper/upper-middle class kids I’ve met in college/work and read about. While there were some afterschool programs…it wasn’t to the degree or level that seems so commonplace in news coverage from publications like the NYT or Chronicle of Higher Ed in which there’s a perception the millennial generation tend to be “overscheduled”. </p>
<p>In fact, I was one of those “latchkey kids” who from the age of 6 often came home alone after school and sometimes had to prepare my own breakfasts and dinners because my parents started work real early and often didn’t come home until real late. This was very commonplace among elementary classmates and neighborhood kids in my old working-class neighborhood. While we had some afterschool programs…we also had plenty of time to not only wander the neighborhood…but also explore other parts of NYC by walking up to the then seedy Times Square or taking the subway by ourselves without being accompanied by parents. </p>
<p>Ironically, I find most of the perceived fear/fearmongering about child abductions/dangers to be greater nowadays when NYC and many areas of the US seem to be far safer according to news reports/friends who work in law enforcement than the NYC I knew in the '80s and early '90s. </p>
<p>What’s more…it’s most common among upper/upper-middle class parents who tend to live in the safest most well-kept suburban neighborhoods. Then again, they are also the same folks who feel entitled to give me advice on how to “stay safe” in NYC…even though I’m well-experienced from having been born and growing up when NYC bore a greater resemblance to oversensationalized Hollywood portrayals such as Death Wish series or Warriors. Two movies which seem to be the main/only primer on NYC life for those well-off suburbanite parents’. :(</p>
<p>cobrat, I was a NYC latchkey kid in the 70s and 80s too. Not at 6, but had neighborhood freedom not much later than that. In my immediate area a lot of kids went to school in a different neighborhood (our local school was,let’s say, not desirable for a certain type who lived in the neighborhood but weren’t willing to go all in and send their kids to the local PS), so didn’t get home until a little later than I did, having only a 3 minute walk through the projects to get home. So I often went to the library and read until I knew more kids were on the block.</p>
<p>I think life changed in a huge way for us with the disappearance of Etan Patz. I was already 13 then, but I saw the fear change the way parents made decisions about what kids could do and not do.</p>
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<p>You forgot to mention the movie *Escape from New York<a href=“based%20on%20the%20premise%20that%20crime%20was%20so%20bad%20there%20that%20they%20just%20walled%20off%20the%20city%20as%20a%20giant%20prison”>/i</a>.</p>
<p>Of course, the New York crime reputation seems to still remain, even though New York’s crime rate decline (more so than the overall crime rate decline in the US) makes it one of the lower crime rate large cities in the US now.</p>
<p>I grew up playing in the yard until streetlights with a pack of neighborhood kids. My kids grew up going to many more scheduled activities and formal programs. I did not push them. They wanted to go. In fact, usually it was more me saying no you do not have time for another ballet class or basketball clinic. </p>
<p>One of the big differences is that there are so many wonderful things available for kids to do today. When I grew up the only choices for girls were girl scouts, ballet and figure skating. For most of us playing in the yard was much more interesting, but I might have been just as busy as my kids if there had been more things to do.</p>
<p>I think you just have to let the kid take the lead and do as much or as little organized activities as works for them. Not because there is an endgame, but because it makes them happy.</p>
<p>In some areas the population is less dense because of larger houses on larger lots, often without sidewalks. You are expected to drive (or be driven) everywhere, so there is no mass of kids roaming from house to house in a neighborhood as there used to be.</p>
<p>Growing up, a lot of our parents were working and most of us didn’t have much to do. We went to friends’ house to hang out without adult supervision. We ended up smoking pot and doing thing we weren’t suppose to do. For my kids, I prefered to have be busy after school. It was a good way to keep them out of trouble.</p>
<p>Move to small town America. Our kids still hang out. Neighbors still watch out for each others’ kids - because we know each other, and we care about and for each other. Is it perfect? Of course not. Do some kids still get into trouble? Of course. But it’s a much better life than living in a suburban McMansion and knowing nobody (been there, done that, would never want to do it again).</p>
<p>We used to play kickball in the streets back when families only had one car and the roads weren’t constantly cluttered with vehicles up and down the street. Where I grew up, now the street is lined with cars parked in front of the houses because its inconvenient to park them in the single car - width driveway and there is frequent traffic up and down the street. Without this stuff, kids could still play inthe street. But not when families own 2-3-4 cars and traffic is a mess.</p>
<p>work hard, play hard - in that order. Works for your whole life!</p>
<p>I have no argument with any of the positions above … including crizello’s. I’d like to see more unstructured play in most kid’s lives. I think that would be a good thing. </p>
<p>The nephew I refer to wants to be an engineer. That “want” requires a college education, and the college education requires a modicum of discipline and study skills … both of which are completely lacking in the kid. We know that “all work and no play” makes Jack a dull boy. What does “all play and no work” make him?</p>
<p>What does “all play and no work” make him?</p>
<p>30 year old couch potato.</p>
<p>^career barista?</p>