Children Deserve the Promise of the Declaration of Independence

Children’s rights to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” are at a low point in America. 

Parents highly restrict their children’s freedom to go outside and play, both directly by limiting their ability to roam outside and indirectly by filling up their schedules with adult-led structured activities.  Most schools have either eliminated recess or severely restrict it, and they also increasingly dole out homework, which eats into children’s precious free time at home.

When I hear about oppressive adults going overboard, I get very angry.  For instance, when I read about the elementary school principal in Connecticut who has outlawed competitive sports at recess and expects kids to do things like pick up litter on the school grounds instead, I felt like dumping the contents of his school’s dumpster in his office.

But do the children care?  In fact, it’s practically impossible to find a child in America today who has a rebellious attitude like children of the 60s did.  Do you know any kids who could sing The Rolling Stones’ (and The Who’s) “My Generation” with feeling?  I don’t.

• by Mike Lanza
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Reason #2 to Talk to Your Neighbors - Mindfulness

“You see, the trouble . . . with always being active and doing things, is that I think it’s quite possible to do all sorts of things and at the same time be completely dead inside. I mean, you’re doing all these things, but are you doing them because you really feel an impulse to do them, or are you doing them mechanically? Because I really do believe that if you’re just living mechanically, then you have to change your life.”
- the character of Andre Gregory from the film, ”My Dinner with Andre” (See clip here.)

Young children are amazing for how they can find wonder in almost any place and any thing.  Those who do not spend much time engaging in over-stimulating “screen activities” - i.e. television, videogames, and the Internet - do not get bored. 

Starting sometime in childhood, most children unlearn this skill of deeply sensing and experiencing our immediate environments.  Most (all?) of us tend to live hectic lives, children included.  Our calendars fill up with school, work, and myriad outside activities, so that we have very little free time.  And, the free time we do have is often dominated by those over-stimulating screen activities that force us to tune out the environment around us.

• by Mike Lanza
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Reason #1 to Talk to Neighbors - It’s an Investment

Many families these days have decided to essentially “blow off” their neighbors.  Their members walk out of their houses only to get into their cars, and later they drive their cars home and walk inside their houses.  They give zero to their neighborhood and ask for zero in return. 

I’m sure you know families like this.  Perhaps yours is one of these.  Before saying, “No, not us!” ask yourself how many times in the last month you have had a real conversation with a neighbor.  Merely waving or saying “hello” doesn’t count. 

So, why should you take the time to get to know your neighbors?  After all, most, if not all of us despair that we don’t have enough time to do the things we know we enjoy - get together with our friends, play sports we love, read books that interest us, go to events that interest us, etc.

• by Mike Lanza
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Why Are Cruise Ships Better Communities Than Our Neighborhoods?

My family and I have been on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean for the past week.  It’s my first cruise, and I’m amazed at how quickly and effectively community develops.  I’ve become cordial with dozens of people.  My four-year-old son Marco has gotten to know about a dozen kids with whom he plays every day either at the swimming pool or at the kids’ daycare area, “Kids Club.” Thanks to those relationships, he has matured socially months in the week he’s been here.

When my wife, my two sons (4 and 7 months), and I are not on land exploring the port at which we’re docked, we’re always doing something somewhere on the boat.  In other words, other than sleeping, we don’t spend time in our room. 

• by Mike Lanza
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Elementary Schools Are Enemies of Play

Young children have always had to deal with a sharp decrease in their free play time as they transitioned over a couple of years from no school to elementary school, which they attend about seven hours a day. 

However, in decades past, schools recognized that children of that age need a lot of play to develop appropriately.  They had ample recess breaks with free play every day during the school day, and they let children leave school behind them every day when they went home.

In recent years, though, elementary schools have become enemies of children’s play.  Many are working to eliminate play at school recess and to eat away at the small amount of play time children have at home by assigning more and more homework. 

Continued on Playborhood Palo Alto / Menlo Park…

• by Mike Lanza

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Recess, The Final Frontier

[This post is the third and last in a series by Mark Powell. In the first two posts Mark described the incredible fort play phenomenon he observed while working at Lexington Montessori School in Massachusetts. Read them here and here. All three posts are edited extracts from Mark Powell’s thesis “The Hidden Curriculum of Recess”.]

Recess beckons well before it actually arrives. Its allure can be heard in children’s lunchtime conversations as they discuss imaginary roles, plans, alliances and teams with an appetite as hungry for play and its unbounded possibility as for food. For some children, recess provides the most important reason to come to school.

Although watched over by the protective, though generally unobtrusive, gaze of supervising teachers, children at recess interact with their environments and with each other almost completely as they choose—a freedom denied them at all other times while at school—and increasingly also in their homes and neighborhoods.

Continued on Playborhood Berkeley…

• by Mark Powell

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How We (Finally) Found a House to Buy

Whew!  It’s taken us over two and a half years to find a house to buy, but we finally did it!  In that time, we’ve lived in three different rented houses.  We’ve investigated the blocks around at least 100 different homes for sale, and we’ve toured inside at least 50 of them.

So, what makes our new house on Yale Road, Menlo Park so special?  Is it the house itself?  Absolutely not.  It’s OK for us, but nothing special.  We’ve probably seen a dozen houses we like more. 

Continued on Playborhood Palo Alto / Menlo Park…

• by Mike Lanza

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Under Pressure

I had a great experience today as I wiled away my lunch hour in the book store down the street from my office.  I thumbed through a great book by Carle Honore called Under Pressure: Rescuing Childhood from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting.  The basic jist of Honore’s book is that today’s kids are being denied the simple pleasure of being a child.  The book is filled with colourful tales that will make you laugh - and cry.  We’re all raising our kids in a hyper-programmed environment that isn’t accomplishing the intended outcomes.  Instead of raising brilliant achievers, kids are increasingly becoming depressed and socially underdeveloped.

Continued on Playborhood Oakville North…

• by Chris Churchill

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Frowning and Fighting: The Laws of Fort Play

[This post is the second in a series on fort play by Mark Powell. In the first part, he describes how the children at Lexington Montessori School in Massachusetts began building and playing in forts at recess. Both posts are edited extracts from Mark Powell’s thesis “The Hidden Curriculum of Recess” in which he writes in detail about the fort play phenomenon he studied while at LMS. A third post in this series will appear shortly.
*All names used are pseudonyms.]

As a lower elementary teacher at Lexington Montessori School in Lexington, Massachusetts from 1994 through 2002, I witnessed for eight years the development of an extraordinary child-centered and spontaneous world of recess play. As children entered the elementary program at LMS, they were initiated into a culture of fort building by their peers. The forts, built entirely from sticks, leaves and found objects from the surrounding woods, were the site of considerable experimentation with different forms and rules of social organization and various styles of construction.

Continued on Playborhood Berkeley…

• by Mark Powell

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Playing Until the Sun Goes Down

Remember playing in your neighborhood after dinner, until you couldn’t see the ball anymore?  Well, last night, I played a game with my son Marco (3-1/2) and three other boys outside in our neighborhood until the sun went down.  This is something I did countless times as a kid, and I’ve been longing for play like this in our neighborhood in Palo Alto.  I want to tell you about what we did, and about how we got to the point where we could do something like this with our neighbors.

After dinner last night, Marco and I were riding our bikes around the block, and three brothers we know implored us to cross the street and come over to their house.  After riding around their block with them a few times, they asked us to play “Red Rover.”

Continued on Playborhood Palo Alto / Menlo Park…

• by Mike Lanza

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Pick-Up Touch Football!

Pick-up touch football game isn’t completely gone.  At my son’s elementary school (Hillcrest) in Oakland, it’s been a busy year for recess and after school touch football among the fourth graders.  The year started with lots of excitement about playing football during recess.  Soon I started hearing about some of the issues/problems:  they couldn’t agree on the rules, ‘Jimmy’ hogged the ball all the time, ‘Sammy’ was terrible and no one ever picked him.  I chuckled a little at these traumatic events, but was inwardly so pleased that the boys had to deal, mostly by themselves, with these issues.

Continued on Playborhood Berkeley…

• by Scott Kleinman

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The Freedom and Fun of Forts

For some children recess provides the most important reason to come to school. With its promise of games of chase and tag, clique-bound conversations, solitary wandering and exploration, pretend and war play, recess provides reliable access to a scarce resource of immense value in the lives of children: spontaneous self-direction. 

But at one school in Massachusetts, recess meant just one thing for many children: time to work and play on their forts.

Continued on Playborhood Berkeley…

• by Mark Powell

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Playborhood Local Site Launched for Berkeley

Playborhood launched the Playborhood Berkeley (CA) site today!  This site is a collaborative effort of area residents Tracey Taylor, Gina Moreland, Mark Powell, and Sara Sloan, among others.

Coupled with Playborhood Palo Alto / Menlo Park, this news means we have the areas around the San Francisco Bay Area’s two elite universities covered.  Now, we need to start some Playborhood Local sites between these two Bay Area communities!

Note that, like the Palo Alto / Menlo Park site, this Berkeley site has Neighborhood Reviews.  You can access these individually by clicking on home icons on the map above, but to see a list of all homes for sale and the Neighborhood Reviews we have, click on the “Neighborhood Reviews” link below the map. 

Note that, since we’re just launching this feature, we need people to submit neighborhood reviews!  Do you know about specific neighborhoods where children play outside?  Is there a home for sale there?  HELP US OUT AND SUBMIT A REVIEW OR TWO!!!

• by Mike Lanza
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Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques IV: Visit the Neighborhood and Talk to Neighbors

[NOTE:  This the last in a series of four articles on Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques.  The first article is an introduction to the topic, the second is about researching neighborhood reputations, and the third describes how I research online information about neighbors of a house for sale.]

If the larger neighborhood reputation and my online searching give me a pretty decent feeling about the immediate neighborhood around a house, I’ll visit there to look around and talk to neighbors.  After all, for getting a feeling for a neighborhood, there’s no substitute for talking to neighbors in person and seeing what they actually do.

I’ve found that the best time to go - i.e. the best time to see kids play outside - is late afternoon, between 4 and 5:30, any day.  I’ll go earlier during the winter, when the sun goes down early, and perhaps a bit later during the longest and hottest days of summer.  Nothing is a better indicator of the potential of your kids playing in a neighborhood than seeing kids your kids’ ages playing there when you visit.  So, as soon as I see this, without looking any further, the house becomes a candidate for purchase.

Continued on Playborhood Palo Alto / Menlo Park…

• by Mike Lanza

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Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques III: Research Neighbors Online

[NOTE:  This the third in a series of four articles on Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques.  The first article is an introduction to the topic, the second is about researching neighborhood reputations, and the fourth discusses what to look for and do when visiting a neighborhood around a home for sale.]

Because driving to a house for sale and nosing around there takes a lot of time, I search publicly available online information on close neighbors first to get some indication of whether kids my kids’ ages might be living there.  After all, from kids’ point of view, preschoolers in particular, next-door neighbors are by far the most important, so if I can find that at least one kid my kids’ ages lives next-door, that makes it likely that I’ll spend the time to visit the house and neighborhood to get more information.

Be forewarned: the methods I describe here seem invasive, but I’m only searching for publicly available information, and I’m doing it for a noble cause - to find neighborhood playmates for my kids.

So here’s what I do:

Continued on Playborhood Palo Alto / Menlo Park…

• by Mike Lanza

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