Just let your kids go the fuck out and play

Some parents think I’m crazy. I let my kids just wander to the (shock) park, all by their (gasp) selves. Oh there are no roads to cross, and the cars that use the cull de sac leading directly to the green space yonder are as seldom as in any suburban dead zone, despite us being in inner city London. Oh yes, there is the odd tramp who frequents the benches by the pond, though more likely these are taken up by snogging Asian teens from the estate across the canal (although there have been a spate of muggings recently, but, then, my kids don’t carry a mobile phone. Perhaps they ought, but then again…) There is even a body of water or three, creating a picturesque additional risk factor, but luckily for me, my kids learned early that they can’t walk over them, except by use of the footbridge that crosses into the park beyond.

I wish my kids would get out more. I trust them to come home, but often as not, they just don’t seem to want to, fixated by their virtual world and pixelated adventures where so many more exciting things happen than out in the real world – mainly because that’s where all the other kids are these days. It’s almost as if they don’t know what to do with themselves when faced with a blank canvass of grass and sky where they can’t mine for diamond armour or fight zombies. It devastates me, so desperate I am to push them out the door. Not so some of their friend’s parents, who look at me in horror when I tell them I let them take the bus to school on hangover days (mine, not theirs) as I trust them to go through the school gate rather than abscond into the wider world, and with nothing to mug, I rather suspect they are unlikely, no longer peachy skinned four year olds, to be abducted. Other parents, insist on supervision for their children, should they step out of the confines of their 2 by 4 gardens, and playing in the street is frowned upon lest it upsets the neighbours in our increasingly cheek by jowl existence. I am the odd one out. Perhaps it is a rebellion my own rather over-sheltered upbringing. But then, I am too aware of the psychological fallout. This is no childhood. It’s a godammed prison. The children are confined by our fears and their addictions, and increasingly their podgy, unexercised bodies.

Jonah was recently found to be vitamin D deficient, a fact which shocked me, since I’ve been giving him fish oil practically since birth. Clearly he’s not going outside enough, a fact compounded by his teacher regularly keeping his class in at playtime so they can do extra work. I sent the teacher the doctor’s report with a stroppy note attached. Kids need to get out and play, more than they need quadratic equations. Fact.

This article in the Guardian confirms my belief that the risk to children is much greater if they are kept indoors than if they go and get streetwise and dirty in the great outdoors, and yet in London in particular, the idea that parents can take even junior school age children off the leash seems to be met with fierce resistance.  Allowing my son to wander in the park he has frequented since childhood, recently  (admittedly so I could go to the pub across the road – no, I’m not an alcoholic, just a committed weekend sipper, thanks) ended up with a cycling policeman taking down my details when Jonah temporarily strayed further than usual, and recommended we never let him leave our sight, as detailed in this blog from several weekends ago. He’s nearly ten.

It depresses me beyond belief and I rather suspect it depresses my children – or perhaps that’s just the lack of vitamin D, which is implicated in just about everything, particularly mood, so now, I’m shoving drops down their throats when perhaps I should be unplugging their devices and booting them off outside. In fact, that’s what I’m planning to do after school today, to hang a rope ladder in the local trees so they can go climbing, and if anyone tries to stop me, I’ll be recommending they too start necking some vitamin D to help them see the woods for the proverbial and realise we are harming our kids far more by protecting them, and shoehorning them into activities than letting them go off on their todds and wander free, while the sun shines.