Ghost Town Playground

We are having unseasonably warm weather this week (Hooray!) so we have been getting outside as much as possible.

After finishing school, lunch, naps, and a few chores, we throw on our shoes and dash out to a local park.  I don't know how it has been in your house, but these cold days are killer on our sleep schedule!  My 4-year-old boy has come in so many times to visit me at night in the last 2 weeks, that I could've sworn I was having an out-of-body experience on Monday morning.  Nothing felt right.  My brain wasn't working.  I had a piercing headache.  You know how it goes.  I recalled that was a semi-permanent state when I had newborns.  I feel for my precious friends who have new babies right now.  They are wonderful blessings, but they rob us of sleep and sanity and we have to settle for not having a consecutive train of thought until they turn two or older.  That's just how it goes.

Whew - rabbit trail.  Back to the subject at hand.

Well, it does connect...the lack of sleep on my part due to my son's nightly visits which occur because we have not been having outside play time.  The kind where you send the children out for two hours and only let them in for drinks.  Where they run around, invent games, swing and play and slide, then have a full, sweet, silent sleep until morning.  I love that about summer.  The kids are always so exhausted that sleep is not an issue.

Enter the cold months and the lack of physical exercise.  Enter the coming down after bed because, "I'm not sleepy."  Lemme tell ya what, dear child of mine.  I'm sleepy!  I'll trade you.  You stay down here and fold the laundry and I'll go climb in your bunk bed and fall asleep.  The boy-o won't even know I'm in there, so he won't be able to visit me overnight.

Hmm...a full night's sleep.  Folded laundry.  It's a win-win situation for me!  I'll do it!

Oops - did it again.

Here it is - after letting the kids play outside for an hour and a half today, I loaded them up and took them to the park so they could play more and use up all that boundless energy!  They need to climb and jump off of things, spin around and get dizzy and run until their little legs can take no more (although I honestly don't know if kids ever reach the point where they can't run anymore.  I don't think it's possible).

And I was really, really surprised.  Here it was, between 4 and 5:00 on a week night and mine were the only kids in sight.  At a neighborhood park, on a really nice, warm fall day.  I could hear just one child playing in her back yard.  I saw two junior high boys jogging with their father for exercise, and one small child was helping her mom walk some dogs.  And that was it.  No kids riding bikes or scooters.  No children running around the playground.  Or playing a pick-up game of baseball.  None climbing or sliding, jumping or swinging.

No whoops of joy for being alive, for being a child who is outside just playing and having fun.

Where have all the children gone?  This playground was a total ghost town!

I have a feeling they were inside their cozy houses doing homework or playing video games.  Or maybe they were at some sort of organized indoor sports practice.

I'm sure these things are necessary, fun or enjoyable...but what ever happened to giving kids free time?

Free, unscheduled, un"adult"erated kid time.

That evening, I saw sweet little girls leaving a dance studio this evening, after dark.  They had their fluffy little tutus and leotards on, and were picked up by their adoring parents.  There is no lack of love, and I'm sure the little girls enjoyed their class.  But they totally missed the fresh air, the warm sunshine, the crisp leaves and the smell of fall...what about jumping in leaves?  What about stomping around, enjoying the crunchity crunch sound of dried leaves underfoot?

I guess it just comes down to wanting kids to be allowed to be kids.  To have down time, to goof off.  To explore, to make new friends.  To just do nothing.  Kids are really good at doing nothing.  Just laying in the backyard looking at the clouds, or swinging endlessly on a swingset.

And you know what?  It's okay!  It's great for them to have unstructured time, to be "bored" so they can use their imagination.  Their creativity.

If the playground is filled with children next time we go, it'll shock my socks off!

Dear America, please give your children time to play.  They need it.