What ever happened to childhood?

What ever happened to childhood?
Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper — Schleswig Leader, Thursday, December 7, 2006 – Page 3

Last summer a reader gave me a suggestion for a column, but I hedged on writing it because I wasn’t quite sure how to approach it. I’m still not sure.

The reader was concerned about how over-scheduled kids’ lives have become and how everyone’s lives in the community seem to be dominated by school sports.

When the reader gave me this idea, the C.O.U. Lady Bobcats were on their perennial march to the state softball tournaments. I didn’t want to look like I was trying to criticize their Coach and Athletic Director or any of the players or their parents.

I was afraid that some people would think that since I’ve served as a church youth group counsellor I was just having sour grapes about having to compete for kids’ time with “open gym,” sports and play practices, 4-H, FFA, band, work etc. Sure, it does make it a chore and plenty of people miss the days when Wednesday nights and all of Sunday were off-limits, but that’s not the real problem either.

By waiting till now to address the issue, I certainly don’t want it to look like I’m complaining about my own A.D. at Boyer Valley about how many basketball games we have to deal with (I coach cheerleading).

I never have understood why they get a season done in ten or eleven games in football, but basketball takes more than 22. I really feel sorry for kids who play JV and Varsity and the people who serve as Assistant Coaches for Varsity who are also basically the head coaches for JV- these people end up having at least 30 or more games total.

But please understand that I’m not complaining about or blaming either of these school’s athletic directors. And even if I wanted to, scholastic sports scheduling isn’t something that’s done unilaterally. There are conference, district, regional and state levels of guidelines and planning.

No, this reader who thought I should write about how thinly-stretched kids’ lives have become wasn’t only worried about high school kids anyway. If I read them right, they were worried about all ages of kids.

The reason I finally decided to write about it here is that are two articles that I recently read in the Chicago Tribune.

One story from the Associated Press sites several child development experts who report finding more and more physical and behavior changes happening to 8-12 year-olds, “tweens” that used to occur during the teen years.

The other story told about the American Academy of Pediatric’s concerns that children are being over scheduled and need more time for unstructured play.

The first story explained that many 8-12 year olds go on dates, have their own cell phones, listen to sexually charged music, view R-rated movies, play mature-rated video games and spend time gossiping on MySpace.

They’re dressing and talking in more adult, sexually suggestive and casual and disrespectful ways.

But then, didn’t adults say that about is when we were kids?

When I was 8-12 we were still riding our bikes, playing cops and robbers, building things with legos, or making up stories with our Hotwheels cars or our Star Wars action figures. We explored wilderness areas near our homes or built forts and tree houses.

Among other things, peer-pressure, technology, consumerism and an accelerated pace of life are eating away at our childrens’ innocence.

The second story suggested that many parents hope to occupy their children’s time because parents aren’t always available or willing to supervise their kids’ free time. Other parents mistakenly assume that overloading their kids is the best way to insure that they will achieve.
But while we pour time and money into these activities or transportation to and from them, we may be sacrificing something far more precious.

Some children are suffering depression, exhaustion, anxiety, irritability and loss of sleep.
Meanwhile, not having time to fantasize, daydream, act out imaginary activities or just horse around deprives youngsters of a lot of cognitive, social, emotional and physical development.
Experts recommend limiting kids to no more than three extracurricular activities. For example: one sport, one music or fine art and one youth group.

Of course, if you’re like us, you have two or three kids, so that’s still six to nine activities to fit into a seven day week.

Good luck.