Is it too dangerous to let kids play outside?
I have many fond memories of being a kid in High Point, N.C., where my friends and I spent hours outside. My parents might have been troubled by the things I found to occupy my time. There was the creek that ran around our neighborhood and the stony abutments — some with caves? — that we explored. We threw rocks at the water bugs.
We explored houses under construction — which my mother strictly forbade me from doing. I’d cut through an easement between the neighbor’s house and mine to get home. I’d ride my bike what seemed to be miles to Steve Boldin’s house. My mother could holler my name to bring me home for dinner.
My kids have never had those sorts of adventures. Most of their lives, we haven’t lived close enough to their friends for them to bike or walk to each others’ houses. It hasn’t been fear that’s kept them inside, but proximity. When we’d drive them to a friend’s house, they’d play — inside and out.
Our story for Wednesday’s Post-Dispatch addresses the changes in how much kids play outside these days. It talks about a University of Michigan study that found that children spend half the time they did outdoors now than they did two decades ago.
My colleague Nancy Cambria, who wrote the story, also blogged about it over here on the Parents Talk Back blog. Here question: How do we get back to those days? Please visit there to read and comment on the perspectives on the topic.
If it’s parental fear that keeps kids inside, stats say there’s no reason for it.
What was your experience playing outside? Why do you suppose the time kids spend outside is dropping?
(2 votes, average: 4 out of 5)
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Kurt is the director of social media for the Post-Dispatch, where he has worked since August 2002. He's been a journalist since 1982, covering municipal government, courts, education and two hurricanes as a reporter before becoming an editor. 
Kurt, as you may know, I am Shawnee Indian. I suspect that the need to be outdoors may be in the genes.
Our barn was made out of huge cypress logs. Whenever possible I would take a taped tennis ball and throw it against the logs, to see if I could catch the rebound I learned to do that well enough to go to college on a full ride baseball scholarship.
I like being outside. That is an advantage when one is dealing with the opposite sex. If I was thinking of asking a girl for a date, I would ask her if she liked to go fishing. If she said “No”, all interest in her was gone.
Skip to today. My LOI (lady of interest) lives with me out on the peninsula of a lake, she loves fishing, quail hunting, goose and duck hunting, etc. Another advantage she has is that she earns a high income, and is not a leach and she knows nothing about cooking. LOL.
I do the cooking;she takes care of our boats….doing things like changing the linens on the thouseboat when guests depart, change valves is our inflatable when needed.