{"id":1381,"date":"2011-01-06T09:49:54","date_gmt":"2011-01-06T16:49:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/?p=1381"},"modified":"2011-01-06T09:49:54","modified_gmt":"2011-01-06T16:49:54","slug":"play-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/?p=1381","title":{"rendered":"Play, Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday at the park there was another little boy who Robin was delighted to play with, except this boy’s mother kept yelling at him the moment he stepped off the paved areas. “No, Javier! It’s dirty!” Over and over, the moment the kids wandered into the sandbox or under the trees: “No, Javier! Get back over there! It’s dirty!” I try not to be judgy about other moms, but I was pretty boggled by this—it’s not like the kid was wearing his Sunday best or anything: he was in gray sweats. And Robin was obviously confused every time his playmate got reprimanded. We’d brought one of his trucks, and he really wanted to share it with the other boy—who was quite interested—but of course what the boys wanted to do<\/em> with the truck was run it through the sand, an impulse which seemed to horrify the other mom. Eventually I felt so bad about what was going on that we left the park. <\/p>\n

This morning the New York Times has another article<\/a> on the endangered activity of play, which reminded me of yesterday’s sad scene. But also one factoid jumped out at me: “Only one in five children live within walking distance (a half-mile) of a park or playground, according to a 2010 report by the federal Centers for Disease Control.”<\/p>\n

We live three quarters of a mile from the park, and now that the rain has cleared up we walk there almost every day. It’s a bit long for Robin (he’s quite tired by the time we get home), but he can and does walk it. In fact he’s eager to: sometimes he comes up to me with his shoes in hand, saying brightly “Take a walk!” I think car culture has really warped people’s ideas about what “walking distance” is.<\/p>\n

Anyway, it’s just sad that the conversation is starting from this crazy point, a point where elementary schools have eliminated recess, and doctors are handing out 75-page instructional manuals on how to play<\/em>, and little boys have mothers who won’t even let them run a truck through a sandbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday at the park there was another little boy who Robin was delighted to play with, except this boy’s mother kept yelling at him the moment he stepped off the paved areas. “No, Javier! It’s dirty!” Over and over, the moment the kids wandered into the sandbox or under the trees: “No, Javier! Get back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1381"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1381"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1383,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1381\/revisions\/1383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}