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the deprived child
Apr. 28th, 2005 08:36 pmI just finished writing this for my bloglines blog, which I'm pretty sure no one reads, so I'm reposting here for a wider audience.
Reference URL: Growing Up Denatured(NY Times, registration required)
I was just thinking about this the other day, it's part of the reason I would like to move to a semi-rural, or at least much less densely populated area: there's nowhere for kids to play here. Planned playgrounds are simply not the same.
I was not by any means an outdoorsy child, but I remember quite a lot of time spent tramping through various unclaimed lots and neighbors' backyards. Even just reading in a "secret" space in the woods near my house; climbing trees, walking home dripping wet from falling in the lake, finding the shortcut between two subdivisions that saved you from climbing a fence or going an extra half-mile to the connecting road (sadly, that shortcut has now been widened and paved for easier access - my brother and I were both horrified that it looked all "official" now).
A childhood without any experiences like that does seem deprived, as stupid as "nature-deprivation syndrome" sounds. I don't want a child who has never had to be coaxed out of a large tree (as I was - and the coaxing was so we could go home, it wasn't even in my own yard). Or who has never learned for *themselves* some of the inevitable laws of physics which lead to skinned knees, poison ivy, and even broken bones. That child has also never had the delight of learning that rasperries fresh from the cane are much better than the ones in the supermarket, or that toads are actually dry and leathery to the touch, or that everything looks a lot different from 15 feet up a tree.
Reference URL: Growing Up Denatured(NY Times, registration required)
I was just thinking about this the other day, it's part of the reason I would like to move to a semi-rural, or at least much less densely populated area: there's nowhere for kids to play here. Planned playgrounds are simply not the same.
I was not by any means an outdoorsy child, but I remember quite a lot of time spent tramping through various unclaimed lots and neighbors' backyards. Even just reading in a "secret" space in the woods near my house; climbing trees, walking home dripping wet from falling in the lake, finding the shortcut between two subdivisions that saved you from climbing a fence or going an extra half-mile to the connecting road (sadly, that shortcut has now been widened and paved for easier access - my brother and I were both horrified that it looked all "official" now).
A childhood without any experiences like that does seem deprived, as stupid as "nature-deprivation syndrome" sounds. I don't want a child who has never had to be coaxed out of a large tree (as I was - and the coaxing was so we could go home, it wasn't even in my own yard). Or who has never learned for *themselves* some of the inevitable laws of physics which lead to skinned knees, poison ivy, and even broken bones. That child has also never had the delight of learning that rasperries fresh from the cane are much better than the ones in the supermarket, or that toads are actually dry and leathery to the touch, or that everything looks a lot different from 15 feet up a tree.
