Cultured Views

Playground or Playstation?

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A study last week in the UK said that kids these days spend more time indoors than outside playing. And that parents actively encourage this. Various theories have been thrown around but I would say that parents these days feel safer having their kids where they can watch them, that it is too dangerous now for kids to go to the park or playground or simply play outside the house. As a parent myself I can honestly see the logic in this way of thinking.

Is society now too unsafe for our children?. In some ways I would say that it is but, to me, we seem to have a more heightened awareness of certain dangers now compared to our parents. OK, there are more cars around these days; assaults are more common; there does seem to have been a rise the number of children abducted and killed in recent years - even children are assaulting other children now. But short of locking our kids in their rooms how do we parents allow our kids the freedom to be kids and to experience life whilst ensuring that they are safe?.

I think it is safe to say that where there is a home with children there will also be the latest in games technology in that home. My kids are no different; they have a Nintendo, an XBox 360, a computor, Gameboys and a pile of games for these that you cannot jump over!. They, like many other children, spend hours on these machines whether it is raining or sunny outside. The XBox 360 also plays DVD’s, so they can watch their movies as well. Certainly beats going outside and inventing a game dosen’t it?…

I wonder what my childhood would have been like if these gadgets had been around then - I cannot say because they weren’t. We played netball on Saturdays, or tennis, or soccer. Then came home and played with the local kids. Each Saturday morning I would wake early and be straight down the road to see which kids were out playing. I lived in street with only a few boys across the road and they were a bit younger than me but it didn’t matter - we would kick a ball around our yards, play hide and seek - or ‘knock knock run run’ . The neighbours hated that of course.

I was lucky, I had creeks to catch tadpoles in and we kids would spend hours doing this. Or we would go over to the park across the road and play on the swings, ride our bikes around the nearby streets or just house-hop and go from one’s house to the other to play with each others toys. I was never inside and I think I rarely even had lunch during the day even though Mum would call me. There was also no Neighbourhood Watch scheme then either. The neighbours all knew us kids and, if one of us got into strife, they would phone our mothers and inform them. And if one of us did something we shouldn’t have…they phoned our mothers and informed them.

It’s hard to say which generation can claim that their childhood offered the most to being a child, but I would never have traded mine for anything. Not for all the XBox 360’s in the world!.

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