If I ruled the world (and that is my 5-year plan), I’d start an after-school program that would leave Gymboree, Kumon and a million Mandarin lessons in the dust. That’s because it would almost guarantee that the participants ended up more self-reliant, successful and happy than their peers. And thinner!
The program would consist of kids coming to my home, whereupon I’d shoo them out again.
That’s it.
For, let’s say, $300 for eight weeks (you figure out the pounds), I would NOT supervise your kids one day a week after school. They’d be outdoors on their own. At dusk, parents could come pick them up…though after a few weeks, I’m sure the kids would want to walk or bike home by themselves.
Free time outside is something Mother Nature always expected our young to have, so that’s where she packed all her big lessons. Kids building dens learn to communicate, compromise, solve the problem of a roof falling in. Big problem! Kids playing ball learn to focus. Hide & seekers learn patience and bravery. Tree climbers have the world at their feet…forever.
These days we’re giving kids trophies for the most minor of feats because we recognize something is missing – a sense of joy and accomplishment. But those aren’t things we can Botox in. A kid has to get them on his own.
Outside, like pinecones and dandelions, that joy is there for the taking. All that kids need is a little time there on their own.
I’ll be taking applications in the fall.
Lenore Skenazy is a public speaker and founder of the book and blog Free-Range Kids. Her show “World’s Worst Mom” airs on Discovery/TLC International. Lskenazy@yahoo.com .
12 Comments
I love it!
Time just being in the natural world is something so many kids never experience. Right on.
Lenore, do you provide organic free, hfcs free, gluten free snacks? If not do you have a refridgeration system so I can assure my child’s snack stays stored at the adequate temperature?
ROFL!! Lenore’s program is the same one used by all the moms in my nighborhood in the 60′s and 70′s. I give it my full endorsement!
And will someone re-apply sunscreen ever hour? But only the kind with no nanoparticles…
Wow! I was born in 1942 and that was what it was like for my friends and me as we grew up in Warsaw,NY. So much of our time was spent outside no matter what time of year.
Awesome, love it. (The funny this is I bet you *could* get a lot of people to sign up…especially if there are “limited slots” and it would be a “resume- enhancing experience”.)
That’s how I grew up. My mother still fondly tells the story of my screams of rage from the creekside (at 3 in January!). When my father got to me he discovered that my boots were soaked but I was only upset when my mitten got wet.
BTW Floyd, this was just a few miles from Warsaw.
Funny and couldn’t agree more – just came back from Europe after taking my 6 and 4 year olds here for 6 weeks (my home) and we practiced just that – outside doing stuff, exploring with me just keeping one eye on them thru the window here and there – and we all loved it !! Somehow I can’t seem to visualize this back in Atlanta without getting screamed at or looked at as an awful parent who doesn’t want to drive her kids around or follow them at the playground !
Can I tell you how BITTER I am that I can’t just send my kids outside to play in our neighborhood! I guess I could send them out, but I don’t know if there would be any other kids around. There are other kids on our block, but their parents work full-time so they are in afterschool programs. I work part-time in the morning so I can pick up my kids when school ends, but we have to GO to a park or a friend’s house to find other kids. I don’t even see kids out on the weekend!! Perhaps I can change that slowly with my kids. But, as things stand now, I am BITTER BITTER BITTER that my kids are having these fun experiences out on their own, and that they are always bugging me to help entertain them and they watch too much TV and play too much computer. (I do try to control it, but it’s hard because there’s not much else for them to do…)
One thing I’ve seen said before is that when ONE parent starts letting their kids go out on the block, they find that OTHER parents start doing likewise. Everybody is just waiting for another person to take the first step!
On my block we’re chock full of marginally supervised kids. Sadly, they’re vampires and only come out after dark.
(I’m dead serious on that, too. When the nieces are going to bed, that’s when all the neighborhood kids come out. I do NOT get it.)
When I first moved into my neighborhood, I honestly didn’t think any other children lived here. I certainly never saw any. I sent my kids out anyway. At first there was only one little girl who would come out to play with them. Then there was a little boy who would come out late in the evening, after his parents got home from work and picked him up from daycare. Eventually more and more children appeared, so that now if I decide to take my 3yo to the park (the only one I still deem too young to go without me), I end up with 15 kids tagging along. It takes time, though. Be patient. In the meantime, what’s wrong with your kids playing outside with only each other?
You might consider offering to be an after school contact, stop in point for the neighbors kids?? Get two of them out of that after school program ad it may snowball.
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