This is an actual headline I just read on Facebook. When I clicked on it, out of astonishment, it turns out the “child” was a toddler and the parents are now MIA. So, definitely news!! But I wish they worded the headline differently. Something like: “Toddler abandoned at playground by depraved sociopaths.”
“Child playing alone at playground” is not news.
What ever happened to the 70s? Letting yours kids play outside? A spirit of adventure?
Now that I’m in my forties and a parent, I am fond of starting sentences with “When I was a kid…” When I was a kid, we spent most of our time outside, unsupervised. When I was a kid, we played in the woods, alone, all the time. When I was a kid, I wasn’t so much the playground type, but I would spend hours on end at the library five blocks from my dad’s house, reading, alone. He never had any idea I was there, but probably assumed I was out being cool at a playground somewhere. Or playing in the river behind his house—the one full of broken glass?—which is another thing my brother and I and our cousins and the rest of the neighborhood children spent hours doing, unsupervised, all the time. There were a lot of tetanus shots.
Raising kids in the new millennium is a whole nother scene.
I regularly write tech content for clients about things likeGPS bracelets you can adhere to your kids so that you always know exactly where they are, every moment of every day. In fact, as I was writing this, I stumbled across a new product called MyKid Pod, made right here in Utah (where people have so many kids that yeah, they kind of need a way to keep track of them). The company tagline:
The child tracker your mom wished she could’ve used on you. #freetheleashkids
Pretty sure my mom did not have any interest in tracking me when I was a kid.
Listen, I very much get the appeal. I am the first to panic if I don’t have my kids in sight at all times. In my defense, they are one. And they are nuts. I don’t scoff quite so snidely at child leashes anymore.
Still, I hope for them a vaguely 70s childhood. One in which, like my parents before me, I am oft quoted as saying: “There’s no such thing as being bored, only being boring,” thus shaming my kids into using their imaginations to find something to do.
I came across a great article on the web about how boredom is crucial for developing creativity. I so believe this. Quothe psychoanalyst Adam Phillips:
Boredom is a chance to contemplate life, rather than rushing through it.
I can very much relate to this on a personal level as an adult, too. Boredom is the seed of creativity indeed. I hope for my children to spend lots of time being bored, outside.
Very boring article!! Very well said!! Your kids daily life’s will never be boring!
Hi Joslyn. I was writing about this very thing recently, not in response to the article (which I saw, too, and wondered but did not click through), but thinking about “when I was a kid.”
We grew up not too far apart, and my childhood, like yours, was largely spent outside. On the school campus, there was a forest of about 100 acres. A few footpaths went through it, but we largely disdained them. Better if your secret fort is off the beaten path, literally.
As a five-year-old, with my five and three-year-old neighbors, I ventured all the way down to the Connecticut River to investigate smoke we could see from up the hill. We felt like heroes in the making as we crossed the campus, the orchard, the cow pasture (with barbed wire), Main Road, Gill, etc. Yes, our parents were less than pleased with us that time. But as you say, generally we were on the loose. There were hemlocks about forty feet high near my house, and we used to climb all the way to the top where the branches got wimpy. And, again as you say, most of the time nobody knew where we were, and that seemed normal.
I’m afraid that I failed, however, in providing my daughter with that kind of life. The noun “play-date” didn’t exist in my life until she got to a certain age. And I subscribed to the community notion that get-togethers had to be planned. Sigh. She seems to have become a wonderful adult in spite of me.
Anyway, great article, and applaud from the other side of parenting your resolve to do it better, do it retro. How can our children save the world if they’ve never seen it outside the house or the car, or unfiltered through a screen?
Thank you so much for sharing these rich, vivid memories! I would love to read more. And it remains to be seen what kind of mom I will actually be
Thank you, thank you, thank you Joslyn for bringing up and advocating for boredom. It’s so underrated these days!
I’ve been on this kick lately about “the death of a culture” which, when I say it, is referring to the countryside that you and I grew up in (a.k.a. the forest people). I’ve been on my high horse about people from the city vs the country, I know, but one of the greatest benefits I feel that I gained from the country was boredom. There’s so much “free entertainment” in the city that I panic we’re all becoming robots with bored souls on a much deeper level. And by free entertainment I don’t mean monetarily free, I mean no effort has to be applied. Unfettered amounts of tv/video games, eating out all the time, drinking out, shopping, unlimited WiFi, etc. Actually, most of these activities translate to the opposite of free. No effort entertainment free at your fingertips, for a cost that will guarantee you have to work through retirement to sustain the lifestyle.
I realize that not everyone needs to spend, spend, spend, and that there is also tons of creativity happening all around me in the city, and boredom can happen here too, but in the country it’s inevitable. You can’t fall into the free entertainment pit even if you have endless money to spend. These activities just don’t exist (except for the one bar/restaurant in town all our parents know very intimately). Not without a license and lots of time available to drive to a land far, far away.
In any case, I have found my childhood boredom was one of the most valuable developmental experiences. Once you get past the initial uncomfortable state, and you create a true vacuum in your mind, it must be filled with something. Along comes creativity, inspiration, drive, do it yourself attitude, responsibility, leadership. I truly believe the greatest character development comes from climbing your own way out of boredom. Learning how to do that will get you through anything. It can teach you about yourself and what drives you. It can give you confidence. And it can give you survival skills (you don’t need to rely on others or on money to get by). Should I be contributing this attitude to the country dweller?
And maybe, just maybe, if you can get yourself through all that, with some assisted guidance, you can also get yourself through tough break ups or loneliness. This benefit I did not discover how to properly harness until my mid thirties, hence the assisted guidance caveat.
Yep, big advocate for boredom! Love it! And get it as much as possible as a kid, because god only knows how much I miss it as an adult.
Cousin, SO true and so apt. I especially relate to your correlation between learning to survive boredom and knowing how to get through Bad Breakups. Have you ever done The Artist’s Way? I have done it several times and it’s also a great way to get through tough times by learning to harness the power of imagination and creativity to dig deep.