I can see that this parenting thing is going to be a challenge.
An important part of the movement is teaching children themselves how to play. The average 3-year-old can pick up an iPhone and expertly scroll through the menu of apps, but how many 7-year-olds can organize a kickball game with the neighborhood kids?
Now, when I was seven I had already organized the wiffle-ball game with the neighborhood kids (who were all older than me), and we had set down all the ground rules. I’ve noticed that a lot of kids don’t play much outdoors these days, but I kind of figured that that was more true for non-athletically inclined people. We played basketball, and football (kill the carrier), and wiffle-ball, and frisbee, and we rode bikes everywhere, and we skateboarded, and we played little league, and did Cub Scouts, we played competitive tennis, and played flashlight tag, and we camped outside, and we took vacations in the wilderness and went hiking in the mountains and canoeing on the lakes. We skated on Lake Carnegie when it froze, which it used to do in the 1970’s. We took swimming lessons in the summer. Our whole lives were played out in yards and gyms and courts and parks. Or the Jersey Shore. Even when we were indoors we were playing ping-pong or air hockey or foosball or cards.
We did play some Atari. But it wasn’t much. We got cable television a couple years later than everyone else. I think we got it in our home in 1984. I used it to watch MTV and the Cubs. Ryne Sandberg and Andre Dawson were fun to watch. I think that was the beginning of the end. I love the internet, but screentime is not good for kids.
