If I were to say the words “summer” and “childhood”, what would come to mind? Maybe fishing, or playing by a lazy river, or swimming at a beach. Maybe exploring some old woods, or playing in a barn, or jumping on a bike and taking off for the afternoon.
Yet while these activities may sound typical, I don’t think they are anymore. Today’s children have far less freedom to play outdoors than children from eras past, and many simply don’t go through these rites of passage we would normally associate with this season.
I think that’s a pity, because feeling a connection with nature should be an intrinsic part of growing up. Those lazy days where you do nothing but explore do mean something. You’re learning about life. You’re becoming independent. You’re understanding more of the world.
Today we let our kids understand the world not by experiencing it but by watching it. They play video games or they watch television, but rarely do they discover anything by themselves. Rural kids probably have the most freedom, and thus the most adventure. They have a lot of land to explore, and not as many obvious dangers. Kids in smaller cities may at least get outdoors, but it’s often because they’re playing on a soccer team, or frolicking in a park with parents watching on. Maybe they play in the sprinkler in the backyard, or climb a tree, or hang out at somebody’s pool. It’s not exactly adventure. And in the big cities where one can grow up without ever riding a bike or seeing a cow it’s even worse.
A new study in Britain has found that children’s territories are shrinking. The amount of area that kids know well is becoming much smaller because kids are no longer allowed to explore. I don’t mean to belittle our worries about children coming to harm; goodness knows little wakes me up in the middle of night more often than a nightmare that something has happened to my kids. But the most likely danger is not that someone will steal our kids but that our kids will lose out on what it means to be a child. When kids don’t explore, they lose opportunities to take risks or act independently. Instead, they grow more and more obese as they enjoy childhood from their backyards or their couches.
Every summer our family takes several camping trips, and one episode in particular stands out in my mind. My daughters and their friends asked if they could take nets and look for minnows in the inlet, and I consented, grateful for the time to pull out my paperback. As they laughed and splashed in the water, they looked up to see a group of about fifty children sporting identical “day camp” T-shirts, who had been bused up for the day. They were all sitting in a circle eating a snack, while their leaders arranged for a twenty minute canoe ride. Here they were, in the great outdoors, and they could only enjoy it by permission. No exploring was going to happen there that day. I’m not sure if they even were allowed to swim at the beach.
This isn’t the leaders’ fault. Having to supervise fifty kids is no easy task. But it begs the question, what kind of children are we creating if most lose out on those days of adventure? We’re certainly not raising any Huck Finns or Tom Sawyers or even Anne Shirleys, with her walks in the woods, anymore.
Time will only tell what sort of adults we are raising, but I’m not optimistic. It’s a beautiful, big, wide world out there, and in these few months where the weather is actually decent, our kids need to explore it. I’m not sure how to balance that with concerns for their safety, but we have to at least try. So take them camping. Go for a long bike ride and let them play by the stream. Visit a farm. Hike in the woods. Build sandcastles. Skip stones. That’s real summer. Don’t let them miss it.
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