The below is from an email in a yahoo group I belong to. Its really nice to hear that others feel the same as me about children and how childhoods should be:
> When we were home during the school year, we played outside from after
> school till before bedtime in the warmer months, running the neighborhood
> ,playing hide and go seek, and kick the can. I don't remember having
> homework until 5th grade and then it wasn't much, not like kids have now.
>
> I have fond memories of those parts of my childhood and I do think about the
> differences between my childhood and most children's childhood. I am trying
> to replicate the good parts and skip the bad. :)
My childhood was alot like this too. There were a TON of kids on the
street, and we all played together happily. My mom was friends with the
mom of the kids next door. In summer and on weekends, all the kids were
outside playing before the parents even woke up. We stayed outside
until "the streetlights came on"...and played lots of large group
games, many of which we made up (or thought we made up), like "Guns" in
which all the kids were split into two even teams, and we'd hide in the
neighborhood (usually a span of about six houses, on one side of the
street only) and we'd try to shoot the kids on the opposing team. Once
they were shot (by saying "Andy i've shot you" when he's in sight),
they join that team, and the game goes on until everyone is found. Or
"Flashlight Tag" which was just like "Guns" only with flashlights at
night. Or we'd play baseball in the street.
We never left our street, and we rarely played in each other's homes.
Our next door neighbors had "the good yard" meaning they had a sandbox,
and a fort/treehouse thing built inside their garage, and their mom
didnt care if we ran all over the yard. So we spent alot of time there.
Today, there are only a couple of kids on my mom's street, and they
won't play with my son. Kids are generally in school all day, and have
hours of homework when they come home. Kids also have tons of classes
after school, like gymnastics, or martial arts, or dance class. I think
what we had more of was TIME. Time to sit around with our friends and
draw comic books, or come up with new games, or figure out a way to
climb up on the garage without getting caught. School kids today don't
have that kind of time, their lives are scheduled from the time they
wake up until bedtime, and even in summer.
K
When we were in Scotland, my childrens school sent home a questionaire about homework and school......my own thoughts weren't listed as choices so I wrote a letter and atcahed it to the questionaire explaining that I felt the school day was quite long enough and that children should not be given homework.
I don't put my children into many activities - after school hours or in school hours...I want them to have endless time to play, to be bored....to imagine, to dream....to just 'be'. There are very few people like me though these days....most parents just seem to push their kids into football or hockey or gym or soccer...with practices and matches several times a week..music lessons, art lessons, languages, swimming lessons.......it's non-stop go go go! I just don't think this is good for a child let alone a family.
But what really gets me is that I have friends who will say 'we didn't put the kids into any activities last summer and we all agreed that it was so nice - we had time to do things, to relax, to be together.....' so what do they do this year???? They sign up for two sports a piece that practice three times a week.....what for??????
So anyway...the discussion on this yahoo group is very interesting and it's good to know there are some sensible parents out there still!
