The real takeaway for me as a parent here is that the more and more we prevent our kids from being actual kids, the more subtleties we might be depriving them of.
Dating myself a little, but growing up as a kid in Virginia, 'outside' play was a mainstay. We went out into the woods, we built tree forts, we dug holes, we made tire swings. Nowadays, the parents of my children's friends are completely unwilling to let their kids engage in such behavior, whether because it's potentially dangerous (it is), or dirty (that too), the kids are expected to meet up in a sanitized location, play in a playroom, or possibly on a playground with rubber mulch as the surface material, and seldom are kids allowed or expected to just go play.
Meanwhile, we've got more and more kids being prescribed more and more things, and while I honestly haven't the slightest clue whether to attribute it to the lack of outdoor play or the miracles of modern medicine, it seems possibly correlated.
Dating myself a little, but growing up as a kid in Virginia, 'outside' play was a mainstay. We went out into the woods, we built tree forts, we dug holes, we made tire swings. Nowadays, the parents of my children's friends are completely unwilling to let their kids engage in such behavior, whether because it's potentially dangerous (it is), or dirty (that too), the kids are expected to meet up in a sanitized location, play in a playroom, or possibly on a playground with rubber mulch as the surface material, and seldom are kids allowed or expected to just go play.
Meanwhile, we've got more and more kids being prescribed more and more things, and while I honestly haven't the slightest clue whether to attribute it to the lack of outdoor play or the miracles of modern medicine, it seems possibly correlated.