Karen Malone in her 2007 article, “The bubble-wrap generation: children growing up in walled gardens,” asserts that over-protective parents are partially to blame for health issues and developmental issues in their children. By not allowing children to be outside alone (to play, to walk to school, etc.), these kids are growing up sheltered and indoors. According to Malone, “many parents are failing to allow children the opportunities to build resilience and skills critical to be competent and independent environmental users” (p. 513).
Malone makes many claims about the effect of this protective layer around children. One such claim is that parents are over-scheduling their children (e.g., music lessons, sports practice, tutoring) to avoid allowing children unsafe alone time. It is true that many studies have found that unstructured time and boredom in children can lead to juvenile delinquency (see “Rationale for Recreation by Witt and Caldwell (2010) and/or many other studies about juvenile delinquency and recreation), but there is also a connection to self-exploration, recreation and leisure, and identity development (Freysinger and Kelly, 2011) that can be neglected by over-scheduling children; not to mention the pressures of living an adult-life before being able to maturely capable of doing so.
Most startling, Malone notes that in a study conducted in 2005 regarding Australian children, one in ten was active in play as we understand it and one in twenty admitted that they rarely left the inside of their home to play. Richard Louv (author of Last Child in the Woods) and a slew of researchers have found time and again that this loss of connection to nature does relate to health and developmental issues in children. Taking it further, researchers have found that children who lacked a connection to nature, also lacked this connection as adults. More specifically, environmental value researchers have found that there appears to be significant environmental value formation in children which can lead to values and behaviors as an adult; or these values if not formed in children, may not form as an adult.
I have friends who over schedule their kids and to me it just seems crazy. Do they need that kind of justification in their own lives? Why do they need to stay so busy all the time? Can't they just "stop and smell the roses". I don't feel personally that not giving a child some play time as we discussed in class is a good thing. On a nice day run the kids outside and tell them to go play. That is what my parents did and I seem to have turned out fine.
ReplyDeleteThis is the worst thing you can do to a child. If you're goal is to burn them out in life as quickly as possible, then yes, continue to over schedule your kids. I know it is primarily a safety concern, as well as to keep them from experiencing purple recreation. But....let kids, be kids. There's a happy-medium that I think can be reached between letting them freely go unwatched, and over scheduling them to where they are losing the freedom of being "kids".
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