As your kids head back to school this week, there may already be a lot on your mind from switching from a more relaxed summer schedule to a hectic school one, but this fact should certainly catch some attention.
‘In just a few generations, we have restricted our children’s freedom to play, roam and become self-sufficient’.
Remember when you or your parents would “walk to school uphill, both ways”. Today’s youth don’t have those travel stories and according to StreetFilms, “the percentage of children walking and bicycling to school has plummeted from almost 50 percent in 1969 to about 13 percent today.” Instead of letting our children walk to school like our parents did, we are now driving them even when the school is close to home. You can see a parallel trend in the little one’s playgrounds, companies like https://www.softsurfaces.co.uk/ are making such child safe playgrounds that it is almost impossible to come home with a scraped knee anymore. Surely this is a good thing but also a mixed blessing.
Why?
“Lack of sidewalks and safe walking and biking routes. The fallacy of ‘stranger danger.’ School districts banning walking and biking outright.”
No matter what the reason, we have a lot to think about and change moving forward into this school year.
For more important information, please visit the StreetFilms website and watch their great video!
I am a grandfather now, and notice my grand nieces being literally enveloped when at our lake cabin. There is no need being fulfilled other than the parent’s which seems to be that he/she feels validated if he/she sees herself being protective. Yet no threat exists. Example – – 6 yr old kid, with completed set of swim lessons the prev winter, and wearing a PFD and standing on a dock which juts out into calm water about 4 feet deep, being clung to by her parent. Is someone giving her validation or is she just holding her own counsel for her own paranoid rationale? My tongue is getting real sore from biting it.