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Strange sighting in Northern Virginia
Today, as usual – I was walking our dog down the local road and was shocked to see two of our neighbor kids playing in their back yard; they are probably about seven and ten years old. They are our closest neighbor in one direction – about 1/4 mile, but we have much closer neighbors who have children who have grown up in the 18 years they have been here. It is extremely rare to see them in their yard (about 4 acres) and we have never seen them anywhere else. There are several other houses within a half-mile and the situation is the same.
Now, let me explain. We live in far north Northern Virginia. Our lot has about an acre of woods, across the street is probably 10 acres of woods with a creek and a swamp and a pond. About 1/4 mile to the west is “Short Hill Mountain” (emphasis on short, but it is steep) which is all wooded.
Even when my older brother and I lived in an apartment with our parents, we knew where the nearest woods, creek, swamp was and would spend hours there, making forts and pretending all sorts of things. Our parents had no real idea where we were and that seemed ok as long as we got home for dinner.
Once I got a bicycle (bought from a neighbor with $3 of my paper route earnings), I could be anywhere.
When we moved to Maryland, my brother and I could ride our bikes down some busy roads to the C&O canal near Glen Echo Park and from there, we could go for miles and miles.
Now, all of this was not without danger. Our mother might have figured that out when we lived in the apartment and excitedly brought home a dead copperhead snake we had killed by throwing rocks at it. (Since I was the youngest, I was delegated to make sure it was dead). We would shoot off rockets based on empty C02 cartridges filled with match heads and a fuse. Sometimes they flew and sometimes they blew up.
I also broke my back in a fall when my brother and I were practicing rock climbing on the C&O canal.
The other thing that seems to have changed is the interest of young boys (that’s all I know) in cars. Before I turned 16, I had a Fiat 600 (a whole ‘nother story) and learned to take it apart and put it back together. The nearest neighbors have a car that has sat in their drive for 15 years with no one looking at it. When I was a kid, I would be all over that. Our grandson who is about to turn 16 has no interest in driving.
I guess my point is that “kids being kids” is an important part of growing up and I don’t see that happening anymore. Some of it might be computer games, but I was about as nerdy as you could be (still am, I guess). We used to watch TV on Saturday mornings (Tarzan, etc), but that was about it.
Do you notice this also? How do we get back to childhood as a time to learn to deal with the world and the things in it?
Published in Culture
In writing this, I realize there is another difference between growing up when I did and now, that is jobs. I bought my first bike with paper route money and my first car with a different and larger (and better tipping) paper route.
After I was about 15, I worked summers – first mowing grass, then in a relatives peach packing plant in SC and later at all sorts of jobs. I don’t think kids these days have those opportunities and I think that is a bad thing.
And take it apart and put it back together and…repeat every time it didn’t run.
We live in an apartment complex. The kids here play outside a lot. Usually in the parking lot. Of course, most of their parents are immigrants from South Asia, so that could have some bearing.
As kids (I’m talking 10-15 years old), we roamed everywhere and anywhere all the time. We lived in far western Maryland and climbed the hills behind our houses for hours at a time, rode our bikes for miles and miles, dug caves in the stream banks (maybe that was kind of dumb), and swung on vines in the woods. The only time anything happened was one time when we were gone for maybe 4 hours or so, and when we sauntered back down off the mountain, we were greeted with a bunch of volunteer firemen who had been recruited to search for the “missing boys.” Uh-oh.
My paper route was about 3 miles long for only 50 papers or so. It was especially rough on Sunday mornings, when I had to get done before church.
I do. And I don’t know the answer to your question. Until last year, my wife and I were living in Utah in a large three story colonial house situated on a two and one-half acre lot. When we moved in there we had seven grandchildren ranging in age from three years to sixteen years. Four of them were from my daughter who lived next door and three from my daughter in Phoenix who visited for extended stays in summer. My answer to the source of the problem you are referencing is visual entertainment. It starts with television and goes forward to all forms of hand-held visual devices. It came to the forefront of my consciousness when those children would tire of their constant visual entertainment and start physical play in the house – running, jumping, wrestling and yelling – and I would go after them to take it outside. But that made me the ogre – even in the eyes of my daughters and my wife. I never had done this when I was a child but there was no television and my house was too small for play anyway. But we learned early, just as you, how to enjoy being outside. The children are almost all grown now and I see a marked difference between the rural Utah residents who experience working outside with horses and cows and other activities that don’t come as readily to those in the city in Arizona. I hope they can figure it out themselves.
Sounds similar to my childhood. Lived for a couple of years on a 10-acre grove surrounded by pine forest. Neighbors boys and my brother would chop down trees, create lean-tos and even a “jail” for us younger boys. We had a burro that my brother and his friends tied to a upturned picnic table for a sled and placed me as a test pilot inside then whipped the animal. How I didn’t break anything I have no idea given the condition of the picnic table after that caper.
Later we lived across the street from a public park fronting Biscayne Bay. We knew every inch of the park, the public pool, as well as fashioning crosses with two by fours to be floatation devices aiding us in swimming to uninhabited bay islands created by channel dredging that lay about 1/4 mile into the Bay. We threw cherry bombs into a tidal pool in the park.
Later we had a styrofoam sailboat that my brother commanded. We carried it from the house, across the park and to the bay. We never successfully learned how to tack into the wind so there was always a pay phone call home for recovery.
My aging skin is likely more spotted due to the strong summer sunlight and, frankly, year round outdoors adventures in southern Florida. But how in the world do kids who don’t live what today is called a “free range” life thrive?
It has been my experience, and observation, that after a day being cooped up in school or whatever kids need large muscle movements. There appears (to me) to be a physical and emotional need for this sort of physical action.
Also, imaginative play – not shaped by any sort of external or artificial programming.
So many of the stories you all tell sound like my husband’s story. He and his brother were pretty much on their own, as long as they showed up for dinner. It was a free and independent growing-up.
When I was 12 my friend Bill and I hoped a freight train from Pittsburgh and ended up in Youngstown Ohio. It was the first it slowed enough so we can get off.There was a little store near the tracks that let us use the phone. My friend’s sister came and picked us up. Our parents never found out.
The delay in teenagers getting their driver’s licenses, or the lack of interest in driving, is something I have been noticing also. The 17 year-old boy next door hasn’t gotten his license yet, and says that he has to wait until he’s 18 to get it now because he didn’t do it on the time line that allowed him an earlier permit. I need to look into the specifics, since my oldest can get her permit next summer. She says she can take driver’s ed as an elective, but wouldn’t want to use up an elective on that course. We’re in Arlington where everything is really competitive and the high schoolers next door spent summer mornings taking classes before they went to work.
I think part of what’s going on is that the permit requirements are more complicated than they used to be. I didn’t need a permit at all and honestly couldn’t really drive when I got my license (outside of Virginia).
Also, I have heard that many kids, probably boys especially, can play group video games with several of their friends while they’re all at their own homes. And I know teenagers who take Uber wherever they want to go, so they don’t need to drive as much. This also helps if the family doesn’t have an extra car.
Still, I think this trend is also related to today’s kids relative lack of independence. I remember playing in the woods without my parents knowing exactly where I was from the time I was school-aged. I broke my arm playing in the woods in a place that neither of my parents ever visited. If kids today are not used to going anywhere on their own, all of sudden driving a car, even at 16, is much more intimidating.
I have a theory that today’s children are too used to being in supervised activities because both parents are always working. It means that kids aren’t all running around and playing outside together and play dates must be scheduled. And if a nanny is watching the children, she is generally going to be more risk-averse when in charge. I need to do a separate post on nanny and au pair culture.
I’m not sure we do. For one thing, I think the world is perceived as a more dangerous place and children are not allowed to experience it for themselves. For another, children are very scheduled – there are no pick-up games anymore with the kids in the neighborhood, just play-dates and adult-organized sports which take up a lot of family time. (If you have three kids, and one is in organized sports, the other two are not left on their own. They are dragged to games they are uninterested in, and bury their heads in electronics – or, if you are lucky and parents insist, books. Although books are great, they are not imaginative play, which is essential for brain development.) Another reason could be that their parents never grew up ‘free-range’ and don’t have that frame of reference.
And don’t forget the social services busybodies. Jumping freights? Killing snakes with rocks? Breaking bones? You’re talking some serious child neglect here. My son played a lot outside in our yard, and his legs were always covered with bruises from climbing trees, running and falling, whatever. I always hoped I would not have to take him to the emergency room for anything because I’m sure they would have thought I was abusing him.
Ending up in Y’town was punishment enough.
There are 2 families in my neighborhood where kids are frequently seen in the yard. One family is from Ethiopia, the other is from Germany.
My daughter is 16 and has her driver’s license. I am very proud.
Go outside and play, mom said. I said, but there’s nothing to do out there. Mom said then just go outside and sit there. I usually found something to do.
There was nothing for me to do in my house during the day. Of course, I don’t remember every moment, but I spent most of my time outside by choice. If I came home too long after dark I did go ahead and pull a hickory switch from the hedge, saved a trip back out.
First job outside the home, fifth grade, mowing lawns. Pretty much always worked after that.
All my children went to Yorktown High School and finished in the eighties and they each got their drivers permit on their 16th birthday. They drove all the time. Things have changed. My son still lives in our house in Arlington and I am visiting now so we went to the World Series together. He drives me around Arlington. There is pay parking or restricted parking all over along where the Orange Line runs and that is very different from when they got their permits. That just went in I think in the eighties so the population concentration (high-density) is making a big difference. These things probably make a big difference in how much teens are inclined to drive.
It’s not just the kids, adults rarely go out of the house except to get in a car unless they are mowing the lawn or something such as that. When in our small town we don’t see adults out of doors except when they are walking for exercise. Mrs OS spends hours each day working on her flower beds, mostly in our front yard. A few folks wave as they drive by but almost no one stops to say hello. I remarked to a lady at the Y last week who was concerned about getting wet from the rain getting to her car that we spend nearly all our time indoors, including our cars, yet we complain about the weather. How can we expect our kids not to follow this example? We need to get out with them sometimes, play catch and other games, go to a park, etc. It’s free and healthy, mentally and physically.
Our neighbor kids do play outside sometimes, maybe because thier dad goes out with them occasionally. When our granddaughter comes for a visit we make a point of going out with her to walk around and check out the flowers and see the cows and look for wild life. This is how we can change things, one kid at a time.
Partly it is because our news media is all about the horror stories and when something does go wrong there is a chorus of ‘where were the parents?’
Partly it is that no one sits on their front porches so unsupervised children don’t have a second eschelon safety net.
Children internalize their parents’ lack of trust of the world around them, and of their children’s ability to deal with danger or adversity.
My son pointed something out to me a few years ago; nearly all toys are branded. If you want a ball, a non-trademarked frisbee, bubbles, etc. it’s probably going to have (for example) Elsa’s face on it.
Speaking of Frozen, Elsa and Anna figures can be gotten in sizes from two inches to three feet.
Kids can and do make up whatever stories they want with their dolls/action figures, but if there is source material lying around it will probably inform, and perhaps limit, their creativity.
Depending on your state’s statute of limitations you may still be able to report your father to CPS.
Air conditioning is a demanding mistress.
That and the SPF level of brick and plaster walls is fairly high. Avoids the skin cancer that way.
Oh, no. That would be my mother who worked all day to support me. I wouldn’t anyway now since I think there was a certain effectiveness to it and no harm done. Of course, we didn’t have government watchers then.
Yes especially on the wrong side of the tracks.
of course! The word was that Fiat stood for “Fix it again Tony”
I will have to write a post on how much I learned (and how I learned it) with that car. My father’s idea of a full tool kit was to have a Phillips screwdriver in addition to a hammer, wrench and regular screwdriver, so he wasn’t much help.
I have wondered about that. Do you think it is really more dangerous?
I think things like traffic are certainly worse although where we live, it isn’t much of a problem. Even when I was a kid, I walked pretty far in town to Elementary School. I guess there was always someone home at the houses that I walked past. That has changed.
I heard somewhere that “it takes a village”. Maybe it does to just provide a perception of being watched over.
Me too. The rule was pretty simple. Do your chores, then go play. Be home for dinner, or if you hear Dad whistle (the range for this was probably about 1/2 mile). We did have to ask permission if we wanted to cross the highway and go to the”Dairy Store” to buy baseball cards. Heck, we used to ride our bikes, without adults, to play Little League 3 miles away. This was all at the ages of 7-10 years old.
Good point. Parents used to be able to get, for instance, a doll house at pretty much any price point, including really cheap cardboard ones. Now, you got yer Barbie Dreamhouse $179, yer LOL Surprise! house $189, and yer Frozen 2 Ultimate Arendelle Castle Playset $199.
I kinda wonder how much the Ryan’s World Mansion will be if he comes out with one. Kid made $22 million last year off YouTube and licensing.