<story><title>Children are suffering a severe deficit of play</title><url>http://www.aeonmagazine.com/being-human/children-today-are-suffering-a-severe-deficit-of-play/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>martythemaniak</author><text>Having grown up in the late 80s in an East Block country, this article resonated very strongly. Growing up in that place and time was akin to 50s America - no cable, consoles, arcades, VCRs or handhelds. We had TV, but it only had the single state broadcast channel which played only one cartoon.&lt;p&gt;The only thing to do was play which we did prodigiously - I was part of a large mix-aged group (6-12 kids, 5 years age difference) and we would play everything (sports, house, building things, demolishing things, raising stray animals, foraging fruit, fighting other kids). It was a great childhood and neither I nor my childhood friends (most of us are still friends, even across continents) would trade it for anything. Interestingly, it was almost the same childhood my mom and dad had.&lt;p&gt;My sister (the de-facto leader of our group) now has children and their childhood could not be any different - constantly shuttled from home to school to organized activity. Play only for a bit under heavily supervised conditions (ie, birthday party at another kids house) and filled to the brim with tablets, phones, computers etc.&lt;p&gt;I feel very bad for my nephew&amp;#x27;s effective lack of childhood, even  more so because it seems that doing something differently is a big social taboo. My mom, siter and I have talked about this, and my sister described being almost powerless - who would they play with? Where? What are other parents going to think? etc etc.&lt;p&gt;When I go to places like rural Belize or small-town Costa Rica I see kids still playing and I wonder if that&amp;#x27;s not the best place to raise a small kid (4-10 years old).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chez17</author><text>I always find it interesting that nobody mentions this. Your generation, and the ones before you, destroyed and defunded parks, they built malls over open land, they made 100% safe unfun playgrounds, they turned America in the the most litigious country in the history of mankind scaring anyone from allowing anyone ever to make a mistake or get slightly hurt, you buy your kids more screens than books, and then at the end of the day you wonder aloud why kids don&amp;#x27;t play as much?&lt;p&gt;* That was a proverbial you, no you specifically OP.</text></comment>
<story><title>Children are suffering a severe deficit of play</title><url>http://www.aeonmagazine.com/being-human/children-today-are-suffering-a-severe-deficit-of-play/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>martythemaniak</author><text>Having grown up in the late 80s in an East Block country, this article resonated very strongly. Growing up in that place and time was akin to 50s America - no cable, consoles, arcades, VCRs or handhelds. We had TV, but it only had the single state broadcast channel which played only one cartoon.&lt;p&gt;The only thing to do was play which we did prodigiously - I was part of a large mix-aged group (6-12 kids, 5 years age difference) and we would play everything (sports, house, building things, demolishing things, raising stray animals, foraging fruit, fighting other kids). It was a great childhood and neither I nor my childhood friends (most of us are still friends, even across continents) would trade it for anything. Interestingly, it was almost the same childhood my mom and dad had.&lt;p&gt;My sister (the de-facto leader of our group) now has children and their childhood could not be any different - constantly shuttled from home to school to organized activity. Play only for a bit under heavily supervised conditions (ie, birthday party at another kids house) and filled to the brim with tablets, phones, computers etc.&lt;p&gt;I feel very bad for my nephew&amp;#x27;s effective lack of childhood, even  more so because it seems that doing something differently is a big social taboo. My mom, siter and I have talked about this, and my sister described being almost powerless - who would they play with? Where? What are other parents going to think? etc etc.&lt;p&gt;When I go to places like rural Belize or small-town Costa Rica I see kids still playing and I wonder if that&amp;#x27;s not the best place to raise a small kid (4-10 years old).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>enraged_camel</author><text>I was born in 1984 in Turkey. We lived in an apartment building in a major downtown area. My childhood memories consist of playing with other kids in the same apartment building or the neighboring buildings. These games were almost always improvised on the spot, where someone would throw out an idea and the others in the group would build upon it. There would be rule-making and negotiation, and lots of arguments. And then we would play.&lt;p&gt;Even when we played well-known games, they had at least some element of improvisation. For example, if we couldn&amp;#x27;t pool enough money to buy a rubber soccer ball, we would find a soda can, crush it on the ground and use it as the ball. There would be rules with that, such as wearing close-toed shoes and keeping the can on the ground at all times (if it took into the air it became a sharp and dangerous projectile). The interesting thing is that these rules were invented on the spot by us kids. Parents had no involvement.&lt;p&gt;One of the major differences I noticed when I came to America for college was that, in social settings, people were utterly incapable of improvising a game from scratch. We always had to play a game that someone else had invented, such as a board game or a well-known drinking game - both of which had strict rules. And if the board game was missing a piece? It was deemed unplayable. No one tried to improvise a solution because it required outside-the-box thinking. One weekend, the guy who had all the board games went back home to visit his parents, and his door was locked. So I found a large piece of cardboard from the trashcans behind the dormitory, and some supplies, and spent an hour or so creating a board game. When I presented it to the group, people were &lt;i&gt;stunned&lt;/i&gt;. We played for hours and I became the god damn hero.&lt;p&gt;The interesting thing is that I notice the same patterns in the workplace. But I don&amp;#x27;t want to turn this into work talk!</text></comment>