How true! Though I was informed I was depriving my daughter by keeping her out of organized activities (which she had no interest in anyway). What I wanted, since we lived in beautiful northern New Mexico, was for her to run and play outside with her friends, to play games of imagination (as I had during my childhood) and experience the pure freedom of childhood as God and Nature intend! Plus, I also wanted her to have quiet summer days with no burden on her time except to sit in the shade and read a book, as I had during my childhood. That was all reaffirmed when a couple of her teachers commented on the “amazing imagination” she had and “how creative” she was–what you get when a child is allowed to be a human being, not kept running hither and yon because parents misguidedly think a child kept really, really busy somehow won’t get into trouble.
Incredibly we were safer with these low-tech dangers!
How true! Though I was informed I was depriving my daughter by keeping her out of organized activities (which she had no interest in anyway). What I wanted, since we lived in beautiful northern New Mexico, was for her to run and play outside with her friends, to play games of imagination (as I had during my childhood) and experience the pure freedom of childhood as God and Nature intend! Plus, I also wanted her to have quiet summer days with no burden on her time except to sit in the shade and read a book, as I had during my childhood. That was all reaffirmed when a couple of her teachers commented on the “amazing imagination” she had and “how creative” she was–what you get when a child is allowed to be a human being, not kept running hither and yon because parents misguidedly think a child kept really, really busy somehow won’t get into trouble.
The street we lived on when I was a kid was a hill. Sledding in the winter, go-carts in the summer. Outside games all the time.