In this blog there is also a great suggestion for a holiday gift for younger kids - a custom made map of your very own neighborhood. I thought this was brilliant. Instead of driving our kids all over the place to different activities, let's try to encourage play in our own neighborhood in the new year. This map may help kids want to stay close to home, play and explore.
Thanks for the link to Playborhood, I felt compelled to leave a comment there.
ReplyDeleteI saw Race to Nowhere, it's truly disturbing. I think a lot of us can identify with the kids in that film because we went through something similar growing up. I can only imagine it's worse now.
But I think we can also be grateful that RTN makes it easier to have these conversations, blogs like yours and Playborhood spread the message as well. So thanks for that.
Thanks for the link...it was an interesting thought. One of the features of kids lives that wasn't mentioned was the continuous stream of sleepover/playdates and birthday parties. It's been my contention that childen under ten aren't really ready to handle the social demands that these events entail. In our North American society though, parents submit because they don't want their kids to miss out on anything...but it's huge pressure. It may seem like just fun..and be accepted as what kids "do" today but that doesn't make it right or necessary. Parents need to stop letting their kids do every sleep over and every party, even if their kids insist. So yes, parents should put the breaks on all the activities that they get their kids trained to get used to, but they need to curb the social activities that put adult-like social pressure on kids too.
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