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Senior Momentum - Playtime Revisited! - by Zoe Tummillo - June 2018

Ever wonder whatever happened to Hop Scotch, Olly-Olly-In-Free, sandlot neighborhood ball games or just plain old Tag? Every once in a while if I am passing through a young family neighborhood I do see youngsters outside “playing,” but it sure looks different these days! They often are staring at some electronic gadget. I can’t recall the last time I passed through a neighborhood and saw chalk drawings on the sidewalks or the Hop Scotch diagram. Of course, kids’ outdoors play today looks radically different from when I was under twelve! But it also seems very different from when my own children were very young.

When I think about “play” and young children, I find myself looking at some regrettable shifts as well as some amazing positive changes. There is so much to consider. There are many young parents (I am told) who adamantly cling to what they call “the old ways,” as well as others who are so far out and away from something as silly-fun as Hide-and-Seek that they look at you, roll their eyes and ask:“are you kidding?”

Do you remember when Mom bundled you up in Winter when it had snowed, gently pushed you out the door and just said it was time to go out and play? Then the door closed! No complex equipment, no map, no electronics –just go play! We had dozens of things to do that we, with siblings, cousins and friends, just made up! It was calledusing initiative and creativity! Running around, exploring, building forts and hideouts, digging snow tunnels—doing “stuff!” In Summer there was always the hose and mud, and making a slide by wetting down the lawn, water fights and on and on...

Have we made our young children too dependent upon us to figure out their play, answer their every perceived need and pre-empt their own imaginations by furnishing them with pat programs (electronic and otherwise) so they have way too few challenges?

In a way it’s a developmental dilemma! Furnishing young children with too many “playtime” answers isn’t always a good thing (in my opinion) because too many opportunities are thwarted, too much creative initiative un-explored. And how about that other important growth thing -- beginning to learn about independence, and making mistakes? There really is a huge difference between choosing up sides for a spontaneous neighborhood game of baseball or basketball or being in an organized “league” when you’re still in single digits, with all the pressure that goes with its competitive dynamic! Ever watch the secondary competition among the parents? Scary...(Sandlot is just for FUN!)

A young child curiously finding the way oneself, in so many ways, positively pre-empts always being programmed. I really think somewhere between those two approaches lies the balance point – that place where self-determination sets in, ideas begin to move in and temper simple reaction to parental provisioning. It would be difficult to find a youngster (again, twelve and under) who wouldn’t jump at the chance for video games or smart-phone time over that simplistic and plain old non-specific: “time to go out and play!” approach. Period!

(Just to be clear, I love my iPhone and all it can do: Solitaire, games, Jigsaw puzzles –as well as all the serious business and personal uses! I know and understand the pull and the quasi-addiction! But my formative years are way (way!) behind me.)

I hope that as the wonderful Summer season arrives and we all think of time for play (on all levels, for all ages) that young parents, especially, will consider the wonderful creative play potential behind the unstructured, un-programmed approach of: “Okay! Out you go! Time to go out and play!”

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