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Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

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Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#91

Post by ars »

bedobi wrote: post #29

The design of the physical environment is in no small part responsible for this. Don't believe me go to Europe and Japan where kids are still allowed to walk and bike to school, to friends places and just in general play and exist outside unattended to a much higher degree than in the US. Because in the US they would be roadkill, and even if they somehow survived outside of a car, car centric design means there's now…

> kids are still allowed to walk and bike to school

That's how it's like in the suburbs. There are very few cars, and kids can play and bike on the roads, and go anywhere on their bikes.

It's only urban areas that are very car centric and kids can't do that, although they can go on the subway or a bus. The suburbs are much nicer and safer for kids.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#92

Post by overstay8930 »

swayvil wrote: post #84
overstay8930 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most parents in Europe would not let their kids walk alone to school lol, maybe outside of large cities but it is not the norm anymore.

Is "lol" really appropriate in this context? Theses days it seems more like a nervous tic.

because its a laughable suggestion to pretend Europe doesn’t have the same problems as the US

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#93

Post by wincy »

grugagag wrote: post #81
rootusrootus wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the US and my kids walk and bike to school. You're making wide generalizations across a large country.

Do they still play outside like previous generations used to?

My daughter has been playing outside since she was 4 years old, unsupervised. She's 9 now. A lot of the other neighborhood kids have followed suit (I really suspect our "benign neglect" made the other parents thing "well if nothing bad happened to her our kids will be fine" and we have about 8-10 kids around the same age on the block that are constantly going to each other's houses and hanging out doing whatever it is they're doing (I don't really know, that's part of what makes it so great). It's almost 9pm right now, I have no idea where she is. She comes home when the street lights come on. The other day I gave her a $20 bill and she rode her bike to the Walmart nearby (no major streets on the way there). She bought her friends ice cream and was a hero. Sure there were hiccups, one time she stole the neighbors solar powered lanterns from his front yard, but we made her return them and apologize.

I guess our strategy is we just don't let her have any screens. They make her absolutely insane. So instead she leaves the house as soon as she can and goes out and plays. Even her 5 year old sister who is wheelchair bound goes with her a lot of the time, in the $1200 Thule buggy super stroller we bought (used). I guess we just lucked out, but we also insisted on it and kept letting her go out even after some woman called CPS on us for letting our kid be unsupervised. We live in a middle class neighborhood with people from dozens of countries and every major religions living together, and all our kids play together. I'm sure it's someone's mental image of the ideal childhood.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#94

Post by o11c »

mihaaly wrote: post #18

Are liberal and secular teenagers more willing/open to admit problems or seek help for unusual troublesome matters set them apart form others than religious peers perhaps? Human culture of the past several centuries are full of art and documents showing the repressive nature of religious or other prescribed expectation oriented groups. There are countless movements to counteract with the oppressive side of prescribed…

That's painting a very strange brush against religious folks, which does not at all match my observations (religious people can very easily talk about all sorts of things with other religious people (at least, those of vaguely similar religiosities), whereas conversations where at least one party is secular flicker and stagnate due to lack of known shared background)

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#95

Post by fzeroracer »

ars wrote: post #88
tcfhgj wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is this?

Most suburbs are like this.

Most suburbs? What suburbs are you referring to, exactly? The 'burbs I grew up in there was nothing nearby in a two mile radius. The only access to school was via bus or having my parents drive.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#96

Post by wincy »

immibis wrote: post #54
jasonfarnon wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it no longer safe there? Because in the states parents have been restricting kids a lot more severely just as crime in cities plummeted (mid 90s--present). So I imagine it's either perceptions about safety, or parents just being more careful.

It isn't no longer safe for kids to walk to school. What happened is that American internet arrived here, and it has political reasons to want everyone to think it is.

I walked to the gas station with my dog and two kids, and had a guy yell at me that my kids were going to get kidnapped while I went inside for 5 minutes to buy us some waters and snacks. The biggest hurdle for us letting our children be free range and able to do things on their own has definitely been paranoid parents and busybodies who watched Sound of Freedom and think that every girl is going to immediately get sex trafficked to Guatemalan drug lords (or whatever, I didn't watch the movie) if she leaves her parent's sight for a second.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#97

Post by akdor1154 »

wincy wrote: post #93
grugagag wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they still play outside like previous generations used to?

My daughter has been playing outside since she was 4 years old, unsupervised. She's 9 now. A lot of the other neighborhood kids have followed suit (I really suspect our "benign neglect" made the other parents thing "well if nothing bad happened to her our kids will be fine" and we have about 8-10 kids around the same age on the block that are constantly going to each other's houses and hanging out doing whatever it i…

Out of interest, how did the interaction with CPS go?

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#98

Post by zdragnar »

squigz wrote: post #57
zdragnar wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add on top of that the communities they do have are all virtual. Virtual groups are a fine addition to, but not a good replacement for physical interaction. Being in physical proximity is just a fundamentally different experience. I remember rather fondly the days of LAN parties, and a small part of me wishes we had kept the networking without going all the way to the Internet. Yes, the irony of this post, and my car…

> Add on top of that the communities they do have are all virtual. Virtual groups are a fine addition to, but not a good replacement for physical interaction. Why not?

There are a number of takes on this. Everything from limited physical expressiveness, to fundamentally different and more limited conversational abilities in group settings, to a lack of physical preference having subtle emotional changes in how the setting is experienced and probably more things that have been and are being researched.

As a microcosm of community breakdown and virtual replacing physical space, just look at the psychological and social impacts of virtual schooling during COVID-19 lockdowns. Obviously, the existential dread of illness, stress of family finances and restricted freedom are all confounding here, so the extent to which physical versus virtual played a role is debatable. Even so, I don't think there's much debate at all that Zoom meetings are in any way a viable substitute for in person classroom teaching and social development.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#99

Post by Daishiman »

ars wrote: post #91
bedobi wrote: post #29

The design of the physical environment is in no small part responsible for this. Don't believe me go to Europe and Japan where kids are still allowed to walk and bike to school, to friends places and just in general play and exist outside unattended to a much higher degree than in the US. Because in the US they would be roadkill, and even if they somehow survived outside of a car, car centric design means there's now…

> kids are still allowed to walk and bike to school That's how it's like in the suburbs. There are very few cars, and kids can play and bike on the roads, and go anywhere on their bikes. It's only urban areas that are very car centric and kids can't do that, although they can go on the subway or a bus. The suburbs are much nicer and safer for kids.

This most definitely does not describe the suburban hellscape that most American suburbs are.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#100

Post by grvdrm »

ars wrote: post #91
bedobi wrote: post #29

The design of the physical environment is in no small part responsible for this. Don't believe me go to Europe and Japan where kids are still allowed to walk and bike to school, to friends places and just in general play and exist outside unattended to a much higher degree than in the US. Because in the US they would be roadkill, and even if they somehow survived outside of a car, car centric design means there's now…

> kids are still allowed to walk and bike to school That's how it's like in the suburbs. There are very few cars, and kids can play and bike on the roads, and go anywhere on their bikes. It's only urban areas that are very car centric and kids can't do that, although they can go on the subway or a bus. The suburbs are much nicer and safer for kids.

Tons of cars in my suburb. You might mean rural areas?
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