There was an article on NPR last week about the decline of executive function, or self-regulation, in our kids’ minds today. I personally thought the article was excellent. I highly recommend you read it. It struck a chord with me because this past fall was our son’s first year at public school. And guess what they banned on the playground - TAG! Yup - OUR school was the butt of jokes on Leno. Apparently some kids didn’t want to be tagged and complained. So they banned tag. Um, how about you just don’t run, then they won’t chase you and tag you? Kinda takes the fun out of it. Then a few months later we got a letter home from school announcing a playground committee was being formed. According to the letter, the kids had created some really great games on the playground, but they wanted to get some parents together with the phys. ed. teacher to “refine the games and make some rules to make them safer for the children.” WHAT?! I couldn’t believe it. What happened to making up the rules as you went? What happened to making up games - period - that only you kids knew the rules to? Parents aren’t allowed to play those games . . . they are for the kids. It encourages cooperation and thinking and allows them to build serious skills.
I grew up in a small town in southern Minnesota. My brother and I we were home alone before school, after school, and all summer when we were young. And it was perfectly fine! We did great . . . and there were so many wonderful people in our community that my mother knew if we swore before we actually did it 
We learned how to budget our time . . . we had chores to do every day before mom got home. I’ll never forget the first time I said to my brother, Pat, “Let’s go and play. We can do this stuff later!” He looked at my 5 year-old self, basically told me I was crazy, and told me to get to work because he was not coming home at 3:00 so we could do the chores that we could do now before other kids were allowed out to play anyway. We learned how to decide what was important and what could wait . . . after I called mom at work for the 7th time in 2 hours, she set the rule that we could call her two times a day. Basically, this taught us to put our questions in a queue and decide when something was important enough to call, and what we had to figure out on our own. We got to play with our friends all. day. long. without parent intervention. Riding our bikes around town playing cops and robbers (that’s how I closelined myself on the tennis net at school and couldn’t move my neck for 3 weeks!), organizing baseball games at the school ball field where we chose teams without worrying if the kid who got chosen last would be emotionally scarred for life, mowing a football field in our backyard and playing tackle football sans pads and helmets, climbing trees, playing on the railroad tracks (hey, we’re all here with all of our limbs and appendages!). My brother and I learned how to get along better than a lot of siblings because we had to. We made ourselves lunch. He taught me to ride a two-wheel bike (put me on his bike, pushed me down the hill in the backyard, and yelled PEDAL! All sans helmet of course). We played Batman and Robin and jumped down an entire flight of stairs with nothing but a pillow case tied around our necks (no, we could not fly). We set up a target in front of the propane tank and shot the pellet gun at it (no, not a good idea). We worked extra to pay for the window we broke in the laundry room when we thought it was a good idea for the batter to stand on the patio in front of said window while the pitcher was in the middle of the yard. When we were older, we spent our entire summer camping at the lake with a bunch of other families. The parents went to work all day and we were all left to ourselves . . . with boats, and skis, and swimming, and volleyball, and bikes, and softball, and woods to run in. We all got up at 5:30 a.m., hopped in the back of the pickup, walked beans (any other 30-something midwesterners out there reading?) until noon, then headed back to the lake for a day of water skiing and swimming and whatever else it was we decided to do. No injuries, no accidents, no broken bones, no fights. Nobody was overweight - how could we be with all that running to do and fun to be had? We used our brains, we made good choices most of the time, and we made our own fun, with no adults around to “interfere” and help us make “rules” for our games to make them “safer.” And guess, what - we’re all grown up, we’re all responsible, and we’re all successful.
Times have changed -Â it’s obvious that there are so many things out there for our kids to play with . . . but not much is left to their imagination. I’ll admit that my kids have their fair share of toys, and then some. And they do play soccer and attend gymnastics class. But they certainly are not short on imagination. We own some plug and play video games, which they touch about 4 times a year. We have one old Gameboy, that they touch on the airplane or car rides over 5 hours long. But they are outside making stuff up as often as possible. They go out and climb trees, make forts out of sticks, make bike jumps out of old plywood and 2×4s, organize their own games of roller hockey and baseball in the cul de sac, ride their bikes around and around and around, make advanced road systems in the back yard with their Tonka trucks. We go hiking and they take their bug catchers with to see what they can find. They’ve got massive rock collections, which of course consist of rare diamonds and dinosaur eggs They have sleepovers and build fortresses out of blankets and pretend they’re defending their turf from the evil enemy - the little sisters! They play tea party, and army, and warriors, and see who can swing the highest or jump the furthest. They draw on the sidewalk with chalk. They spray the hose and pretend they’re firworks. They climb the biggest hills they can find when we take Duma on a walk and pretend they’re astronauts up high above the Earth. I only hope they continue to be able to use their play to enhance their minds and bodies and experience childhood as it should be . . . fun, mostly unscheduled, and carefree.
What do your kids do to enhance their imagination and develop “serious skills”? Do you let them play by themselves without intervening? Do you let them work out their own issues with each other? Do they have more toys than they know what to do with? Or do they pick up a stick and suddenly become a pirate or gladiator or music conductor?
Princess is a bit too young to figure out the games to earn Kinzcash to buy stuff with. So every day that she can’t log on (which is most because I don’t let them except on weekends) I log on to her account and spin the Wheel of Wow, make 5 wishes in the Wishing Well, and go on a Gem Hunt to earn her Kinzcash so she can buy stuff for her kitty. Is it sad that I was ecstatic today when I kicked Webkinz World ass and won over 1500 Kinzcash for my daughter?!
 
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