The Anti-Helicopter Parent’s Plea: Let Kids Play!
Thernstrom, M. (oct 19, 2016). The Anti-Helicopter Parent’s Plea: Let Kids Play! New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/23/magazine/the-anti-helicopter-parents-plea-let-kids-play.html.
I held Kieran’s hand tightly and decided never to play there again.
The author makes her point clear when it comes to the whole article. She decided to never play there again....
I think of playing on the roof more like entering a lottery in which, if everyone’s kid plays on the roof, someone’s kid won’t grow up — and I don’t want a ticket. The real question is: Do you believe that the child who falls could be yours?
Melanie basically said we adults bend around our children at times. when collision is easy we work ourselves around a rising situation as to navigate in the most beneficial way.
but then I succumbed to the heady feeling of power of looking down on the world. It was like being in the spire of a castle in a children’s book
This just made me dive into what was being said of how it felt reading it it really touched base on pathos(emotion).
Google has an answer to that question (about 150 children in the United States die from falls from roofs, windows and balconies annually),
Mike believes that the children wont fall off the roof while climbing around it but Melanie throws out there that about 150 kids die from these exact kids of behaviors that Mike supports.
“Kids were with their moms until they were 4, and then they were on their own with the other kids, practicing through play the intricate skills they need to survive: finding their way through the jungle, making weapons and identifying food sources.”
Kids developing survival skills.
Peter Gray, a professor of psychology at Boston College and a fan of Mike’s ideas, spent a day observing the Lanza boys at play. Gray says that when he gives talks on the critical importance of free play in normal development, audience members point out that they are sold on the idea, but that all the kids are on their screens. He always tells them about Mike’s playborhood to show how parents can change their local culture.
Grey agree with Mike and uses his playborhood term in his lectures on free play.
Palo Alto high school students in recent years. “It’s been pretty clear to me since I moved here eight years ago that kids are just not happy here,” Mike says, and “the suicides are just the extreme examples of the broader problem.” He believes “the poor quality of children’s lives around here” stems from their lack of autonomy.
This hits close to home because we have an increased rate of suicides that we blame on bullying but is that all it is?
Playborhood. He invited kids to parties and gave the signs to their parents, to put in their yards and on the road in front of their houses so their children could “reclaim the streets from cars.” (We had the sign in our driveway, but my husband accidentally ran over it, and the shards of yellow plastic remained there for months — a good reminder, he said, of what happens to children who play in the street.)
This connects with the readers because as parents we warn our children of the cars and advise them to not play in the road.
As part of Mike’s quest for a playborhood, he began doing research and visiting neighborhoods in different parts of the country that he thought might fit his vision. The first place he visited was N Street in Davis, Calif., a cluster of around 20 houses that share land and hold regular dinners together. Children wander around freely, crossing backyards and playing in the collective spaces: Ping-Pong table, pizza oven and community garden.
Mike researched the free play theory in other communities.
“Everyone complains about kids not having enough free time, and being addicted to technology,” Mike says. “There are a million studies documenting the negative effects of lack of free play in children. Well, we know the harms. I asked myself: What am I going to do about it for my kids?”
Mike's words have a point we think our kids are on electronics to long anymore and we want to shove them outside and tell them to go play. her words were "what am i going to do about it for my kids?" this is relating to parents with school aged kids. It makes you think hmmm what could I do to encourage free play.
new development wasn’t a playborhood. But today it would simply be the norm. Playborhoods have all but disappeared.
Readers can relate to this line because growing up there were kids everywhere and now there's hardly any outside except in apartment complex's. today most kids are on a electronic device or in front of the T.V.
But Mike feels that organized team sports fail to teach the critical life skills that he and his friends learned in pickup games they had to referee themselves. They were forced to resolve their own disputes, because if they didn’t, the game would end. Their focus was not on winning and losing, as when adults are in charge, he says, but simply on keeping the game going.
This follows with Mike's concept that kid have to govern their own rules.
“The Little Rascals” and “Leave It to Beaver,” in which kids build forts and ride bikes outside, unsupervised — free, skirting danger, but ultimately always lucky.
Movies that support the free play theory with very little neg consequences.
“The society of 5-year-olds is fragile and may fall into savagery!”
Her quote points out how 5 year olds are vulnerable and can become wild and unruly..
Perla is quiet, petite, deliberate and self-contained. The only child of Chinese immigrants, she wants her sons to have considerably more fun than she had.
Mike's wife wants her sons to have a fun childhood which was what she lacked as a child.
mom philosophy (which could just be described as contemporary parenting philosophy) is just the opposite: to play safe, play nice and not hurt other kids or yourself. Most moms are not inclined to leave their children’s safety up to chance.
She's right about the difference between dads and moms. Moms are less likely to let their kids take chances that could get them hurt but men are more apt to say if you get hurt it will make you tougher.
of encouraging boys to take risks and play rough and tumble and get — or inflict — a scrape or two.
This is how we typically think of boys now girls on the other hand, we want them to dress up and stay clean and not play football with the boys.
Think about your own 10 best memories of childhood, and chances are most of them involve free play outdoors,”
This quote supports the idea that free play is good. she invites you to think about your fondest memories and is right that at least my best memories were made outside during free play.
He consciously transformed his family’s house into a kid hangout, spreading the word that local children were welcome to play in the yard anytime, even when the family wasn’t home.
Kids playing in Mikes yard on his playground equipment when not home is dangerous because he could be sued for a kid falling and getting hurt on his property without supervision.
Mike is a deep believer in the idea that “kids have to find their own balance of power.”
Quote to use in paper. Basically saying that kids have to find out where they stand in their own world. I picture the power/ strength within the child. However i dont agree with the next sentence where Mike believes that kids should create their own society governed by it's own rules. I believe we have rules for kids for a reason we have to have structure, consistency and rules so that they can grow up obeying other rules lived under as adults.
Mike decided to focus on his ideas about parenting. He began writing a blog and giving talks and eventually self-published a book entitled “Playborhood,” a phrase he coined to describe the environment he wanted for his kids.
supports "let kids play" She explains how he came around to spending time with his kids and how the neighborhood kids came over to play because the back yard was phenomenal.