Whatever Happened to Childhood?

by Mary Hood, Ph.D.

This past week we have once again been experiencing the all-star baseball season, which usually eats up a good part of our summer. This is one of the times that I have the most contact with public school parents, and I actually enjoy the experience. I’ve always believed you can become too narrow in your thinking if you always hang around with people that are exactly like you. Most of these parents are really nice people, but I find we have little in common, and struggle to find things to talk about.

At the first district game, I watched as a curious scenario began to unfold. A young boy, who stated he was a sixth grader, began to play a game he called, ?War?. The boy was rather tall and gawky, and looked older than his apparent age. He stalked up behind a fifteen-year old who was sitting in front of me, put a toy gun up to his back, and said, ?Okay, who do you work for??

After the fifteen year old refused to play along, the boy ran away. Gradually, he began to get converts. From all over the stands, boys began to edge way from their parents. Using their cocked fingers as weapons, they started to take sides and retired to positions behind bushes and trees.

About this point, the disapproving murmurs began. One mother commented that she didn’t understand ?in this day and age? why this type of behavior would be tolerated. Another expressed concern, wondering whether or not the gun had been checked by an adult to make sure it really was a toy.

A few more minutes went by. Two of the teens in the stands who considered themselves particularly ?cool? (Translation: several piercings, weird hair color, poor grades at school) mysteriously vanished into the crowd. In a few minutes, they showed back up, chasing some other children furiously, with their ?finger weapons? cocked and ready. One of the mothers looked back at me, and said, ?If anyone had told me that my sixteen year old son would be out here playing ?War? with a bunch of younger children, I would never have believed it.?

Pretty soon, all the adults in the stands were talking about the game. Most of the comments were very negative. “This type of thing is exactly what leads to school violence!” “Why aren’t those parents stopping their kids from playing along with this guy?” “Who is he, anyway?” “Don’t you think this is a little immature for these teenagers?”
Finally, I was forced to enter the conversation. ?Guys,? I said,?Children have been playing cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians for as long as there have been real weapons around. You’re all just so used to having your kids play computer games and watch television that you can’t recognize real play when you see it!? (Actually, I might have been a bit more diplomatic than that, but this was the general gist of what I said.)

At that, a moment of silence came over the group. Then one mother said, ?You know, I remember playing kick the can when I was that age.? Another chimed in with her memories of ?Red Light, Green Light?, and I reminisced a bit about playing ?freeze tag? during family reunions.

One of my favorite quotes from Charlotte Mason’s the following:

“There is little danger in these days of much educational effort that children’s play should be crowded out, or, what is from our present point of view the same thing, should be prescribed for and arranged until there is no more freedom of choice about play than about work. We do not say a word against the educational value of games (such as football, basketball, etc.) ... But organized games are not play in the sense we have in view. Boys and girls must have time to invent episodes, carry on adventures, live heroic lives, lay sieges and carry forts, even if the fortress be an old armchair; and in these affairs the elders must neither meddle nor make.”

One thing that has always impressed me is how quickly teenagers will revert to small children’s behavior when they are given a real chance to throw off their veneer of developing adulthood and join in genuine play. That’s all that was happening at the ball field. If the truth be told, I’d be willing to bet that every one of the ball players, including my own eleven-year-old son, would have willingly removed their brand-new uniforms, thrown down their fancy equipment, and joined right in if given the choice.

Obviously, I’m not against organized sports and games. Steve loves his baseball, and his participation in it is entirely by choice. As long as parents are not pressuring children to take up sports, and stress the positive parts of the activity, rather than focus on performance and win-loss records, such experiences can be great.

Yet, it is really important to remember that these sports are not genuine play. Neither are the many game-like activities that homeschooling parents sponsor and assist, especially when doing ?unit studies?. Real play is spontaneous and child-generated. It can only flourish when the children have a reasonable amount of free time and parents who are willing to sit back and stay out of the kid’s ?business?, except when their presence is needed due to genuine safety concerns. If I could change one things about most parents today, it would be to help them stop their tendency to ?hover? too much over their children’s play.

Although ?war? sounds like a pretty competitive game, it actually required some very complicated cooperative work coordinating the various field generals and spies. Play may also be a single small boy, sitting in his room playing with his toy soldiers and his marbles. Some of the my best childhood memories involve a game I used to play with my brother up in the attic. We invented complicated cannons using tinker toys and rubber bands and marbles, set up opposing armies on the opposite sides of the attic, and then mowed down the little army guys with our cannon fire.

It didn’t hurt my development, either, to walk around with a gun on my hip playing Roy Rogers and Dale Evans every Saturday morning. These games are simply part of childhood. If they are no longer acceptable, if all children are allowed to do are adult-sponsored, rule-bound activities, then childhood will truly be gone, and we will all eventually see the tragic effects on kids who have never been allowed to be kids. Perhaps if the Columbine teens had more opportunity to pretend and have a little harmless fun, they might not have turned to the darker pursuits which eventually lead them to tragedy.

By the way, I realize this can be a touchy subject, and some of you may feel that I’m too lenient on the subject of playing with guns. One thing I do understand is that we are ALL individuals! Among other things, that means we don’t always have to agree on everything!

This article was reprinted with permission and first appeared in Mary Hood’s newsletter: The Relaxed Home Schooler, Summer 2002. Mary Hood is the author of The Relaxed Home School, The Joyful Home Schooler and her newest book, The Enthusiastic Home Schooler. She says that her newest book is intended to help people who are struggling with burnout and financial problems, by reminding them of the way things were in the early days of the movement (no curriculum fairs, little curriculum available, no resource centers, etc.) and also to remind people that others have survived during bad times with far less than our generation. To order any of Mary Hood’s wonderful books, guide books, audio tapes or to subscribe to her newsletter ($6/year) Contact : ARCHERS - Mary Hood, P.O. Box 2524, Cartersville, GA 30120 relaxedhomeschool@juno.com or Telephone (with discretion please) 1-770-917-9141 (Please remember Eastern Standard Time).

(We are also looking forward to Mary speaking at our 2003 New England Homeschool & Family Learning Conference.)