How gadgets and modern life affect the human race
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Though it’s a couple of years old, I came across a free e-book about free range kids: No Fear: Growing up in a risk averse society, by Tim Gill.
This is not to be confused with the Free Range Kids blog by Lenore Skenazy, or her upcoming book called Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry
The “No Fear” e-book was found via Instapundit.
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Many of the readers of this blog would identify with the message on this shirt. It’s on sale at Threadless.
Buy one for your screen-addicted friends or kids.
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How old do your kids need to be before you’ll let them travel on public transportation?
My daughter just flew from JFK to Houston with a friend the same age as her: fourteen. A direct flight, with adults dropping them off at the gate and picking them up at the other end. All things considered they were extremely safe through this trip over the holidays.
When we ran into friends and relatives around the holidays who noticed she was absent, we told them she was in Texas.
“She’s in Texas? Who did she go with?”.
“With one of her classmates. They went to visit a mutual friend.”
“Oh, her friend’s family was going down too?”, with a sense of relief on their faces.
“No. Just the two of them,” I said, as I watched their eyes open wide with disbelief.
Most didn’t react that way. I often heard people say that this would be good step for her and that she would build some confidence out of the trip. The strongest disagreement with my choice seemed to come from mothers, while fathers seemed generally more supportive.
My father, at age 12, took a train to NYC from Connecticut with his cousin. He survived to tell the tale just fine. How did they get to the train station in New Haven or Bridgeport? They hitchhiked. They made this trip more than once.
Lenore Skenazy, was letting her son, at nine years, ride the subway in NYC, by himself. The day after Christmas this year — he is now ten years old — he got on the train, and a conductor finding him traveling alone raised an issue believing that this was not right. The police were called, but eventually, it turns out that everything was OK. The policy of the MTA, which nobody was apparently aware of, states that kids can ride along as long as they are eight and up.
The hair on my neck bristles sometimes when I hear people say, “Well, we live in different times. It’s not like it used to be,” with the assumption that the world is a more dangerous place.
But the only stats that I’ve seen have indicated that the world is getting to be a safer place for children, with rates of crime against children actually dropping.
Parents that live in fear and impose overly restrictive limits on their kids are making a terribly misinformed decision. Reality does not support the reasons that they are choosing to limit their kids experiences. Worse, they are passing their irrational fears onto their children, who will grow up wrongly believing that the world is to be feared and danger lurks everywhere.
Would you let your ten-year-old ride the MTA around NYC alone? When your neighborhood is NYC, then I don’t see why you wouldn’t. Some parents would probably side with people who think that Lenore is an irresponsible parent. Lenore sees that she’s giving her kids freedom, responsibility, and experiences that will serve them well in becoming adults. I side with her. I believe that the job of raising a child is one where you gradually give a kid more freedom and responsibility so that by the time their are an adult, they are well-prepared.
Nowadays, consider that kids who are likely to be traveling on airlines or subways are also outfitted with a cell phone, giving them easy access to emergency services. Such luxuries didn’t exist when my Dad traveled. They certainly didn’t exist in the days of Ben Franklin and Davy Crockett either, who began adulthood in their early teens.
I have Lenore’s book, Free Range Kids: Giving Our Kids the Freedom We Enjoyed Without Going Nuts with Worry
Indeed, times have changed. Unfortunately it is the parents have changed. Thank you John Walsh and the rest of the media for inciting record levels of fear amongst parents.
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“I had forgotton how… how simple beauty is, as nature… you know… taking something from nature and being creative with it. I had forgotten about how expressive that can be and I’m beginning to remember now. I want to try things.”
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On a weekday morning, last week, I was waking up, still a bit groggy, when I heard my daughter excitedly calling her brother over to the window, saying something about “birds”. It sounded like my son was unimpressed, but her enthusiasm was surprising for 6:45am.
When I got out of bed and went to the kitchen, I asked, “What were you showing your brother this morning? Something about birds?”
She said, “Oh ya! I was getting ready for school, and I could hear all these birds singing outside! I can’t remember the last time I heard them. I got excited.”
I laughed at the weirdness of it all — but is it that weird, really? We forget how much nature offers us when we rush around all of the time. We’re so busy with work, school, being connected to gadgets, and stuck indoors during the cold season. When winter wraps up and warmer days bring singing birds back, it really does make us feel better. We welcome back a missing piece of our wellness.
I was happy that she kicked off her morning with the happiness of the chirpy birds, but if nature is so important to the well-being of my kids, I worry a bit. They get a lot less of nature’s positive influences than my generation did as kids. I would easily spend eight to ten hours outdoors with other kids on a weekend day in the summer. The kids I see today probably spend a quarter of that time outdoors on a good day! Computers, video games, cell phones and television contribute to keeping kids indoors.
This is why a coalition of groups, led by the Rio Grande chapter of the Sierra Club, wants lawmakers in New Mexico to implement a one-percent tax on video games, game consoles, and TVs. This would create a fund to help pay for outdoor education.
“We believe that an outdoor education program in New Mexico could be funded through a tax on the very activities that are divorcing kids from nature, promoting more sedentary lifestyles,” said Michael Casaus, Sierra Club’s New Mexico youth representative. “One of those culprits is TV and what we call screen time.” (CNN)
Those are sentiments that most concerned parents share, but is more government intervention, laws, and bureaucracy really the answer? Do we really need to outsource parental responsibilities to the government?
Parents already have a lot on their plates and are stressed, but consider Richard Louv’s point from his book, “Last Child in the Woods“: Nature can be an antidote to the problems parents are experiencing. “Stress reduction, greater physical health, a deeper sense of spirit, more creativity, a sense of play, even a safer life – these are the rewards that await a family when it invites more nature into children’s lives,” he says.
It’s our job as parents to get kids off the computers and video games and get them outdoors. It is also important to be involved with them in nature and encourage it by being good role models. We should also enjoy what nature has to offer to us for our own well-being.
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What made this article particularly interesting was the graphic that accompanied it, showing how each successive generation was granted less and less liberty to roam.
The author of the article doesn’t take any technology-related angle, but you would think that with cell phone and GPS related technology that parents might be able to loosen up little bit on the restrictions, but that’s clearly not what’s happening.
I linked this article however, because it hits on another common theme you’ve read about on this blog: Kids need to be connected to nature for their well being.
The report’s author, Dr William Bird, the health adviser to Natural England and the organiser of a conference on nature and health on Monday, believes children’s long-term mental health is at risk.
He has compiled evidence that people are healthier and better adjusted if they get out into the countryside, parks or gardens.
Stress levels fall within minutes of seeing green spaces, he says. Even filling a home with flowers and plants can improve concentration and lower stress.
…”Studies have shown that people deprived of contact with nature were at greater risk of depression and anxiety. Children are getting less and less unsupervised time in the natural environment.
Overuse and reliance on technology can keep kids away from nature. But so can over-protective parents. Perhaps parents are over-protective because they get a steady stream of news that scares the heck out of them.
What are we doing to our future and our children’s futures when we start letting fear make our decisions? Do we risk doing more harm than good? How can we use technology to help alleviate our fears instead of amplify them?
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The concerns about Families and Technology extend beyond this blog. SoftwareTime is a company founded on the idea that technology affects families in many ways. Balance and responsible use of technologies is important. SoftwareTime's products will help.
