One thing I’ve noticed while camping and spending time on the road is that there is a stark difference in the cultures of childhood in regular neighbourhoods vs. campgrounds. The way that children spend their time couldn’t be more opposite and it grieves me to see that outside of camping, most children are slipping farther and farther into the bubble and “safety” of a sedentary indoor life.
With video games, helicopter parents and a general sense of overprotectiveness, most children these days spend their time at home inside, or if they’re outside it’s generally for organized sports. Sadly, the average American child only spends 4-7 minutes a day freely playing outside. How shocking are those numbers?! Our time living in our suburban neighbourhood these past 12 years have very clearly confirmed this sad statistic.
The Draw For An Indoor Childhood
In the age of consumerism and technology it’s not surprising that children are mostly found indoors. Companies pumping out the newest toy of the week have been shoving their products down our throats for years, and thanks to ads the kids know what’s on the market. To kick it up a notch, kids no longer want simple wooden building blocks or marble runs, they want expensive video game systems and big screen TVs to play them on. With shows like CoComelon and high intensity video games, children’s brains are changing and they’re struggling with concentration and executive function. If kids do ask for an active gift like a new bike, it’s probably an e-bike or $1K one-wheel (nothing against the one-wheel – those look amazing and super fun for cruising campgrounds). But I think there’s more to it than just the simple fact that kids love television, video games and electronic toys.
America is the land of bigger and better. Parents work long hours and multiple jobs to afford huge home renovations, luxury cars, the newest iphone for the whole family, fancy vacations and the latest greatest toys. All this work generally leads to two outcomes:
- children need longer hours in childcare,
- parents bring work home and need to keep kids quiet and entertained (hello, TV. My Dad used to always remark what a great babysitter it was. I think his appreciation for it ran deep given that he grew up in an age where technological entertainment came through the radio and he also at one point or another had a grand total of 8 children in and out of his house).
But both of these options potentially cut into the freedom of childhood.
Adding to that we have the media (news channels) which are constantly spouting out bad news and pushing fear into the hearts of Americans.
“Don’t go out in the sun, it will kill you”,
“Crime rates at all time high”,
“Gang shooting in local neighbourhood”,
“Man on drugs holds people hostage”,
“Parents jailed for leaving teen locked out of house for two hours”,
“The streets are covered in hepatitis”,
“The woods are riddled with disease carrying parasites this year.”
And so on and so forth. No wonder no one wants to let their children outside without adult supervision. There are maniacs and diseases lurking around every corner just waiting to take out the kids! Plus if your children are always inside your own home you can be sure they aren’t outside joining gangs and getting into any trouble of their own. God forbid we trust them with a little bit of freedom.
What Children Need
Keeping kids out of trouble might keep them out of trouble, but in the end it’s doing them a huge disservice. It’s literally messing with their mental, emotional and physical well-being. Keeping them indoors under constant supervision is destroying their childhood. What they really need is some freedom. They need space to test the boundaries, and a safe home to come home to when they mess up or need reassurance. We know that children inevitably make some bad decisions or mess up. Great. Let them. Learning from their own mistakes is a sure way for them to learn how to do better.
Kids need peers. They need friends and neighbours, and even other kids that they struggle to get along with. Working out these relationships in groups of children helps them learn to deal with their problems without the intervention of an adult to solve everything for them. Sure, guidance from adults helps. But they can get this when they’re at home, then practice it in real-life circumstances on their own.
Spending free, unstructured time away from adults, and especially outside, helps children build their creative brains. Do your children often use the phrase “I’m bored”? I don’t think any family is immune to this, but creative children and those with groups of kids to run with tend to be bored less often. Boredom comes when kids don’t know what to do, which is an easy state to be in when activities are always being provided. In the absence of a scheduled event or project, children don’t know what to do because they haven’t had to figure it out for themselves: entertainment has always been provided for them. The sure way to fix this is to let them be bored, and struggle through it.
Kids need lots and LOTS of time playing outside. And I don’t just mean the little kids who are happy to splash in puddles and throw rocks. I mean big kids, too. (Even us adults seriously benefit from this.) Thanks to our lack of time spent outside we’re suffering from something called Nature Deficit Disorder, a term coined by author Richard Louv. We’re no longer outside engaging all 5 senses, which is dulling our cognitive abilities and increasing hyperactivity disorders. This is literally just adding fuel to the fire in the case of our childrens childhood AND education – they’re stuck inside of buildings all day, not being kids, and getting an education not at all based in the real world. Under the guise of meeting top notch educational standards, we’re actually just failing our kids.
The Shift
All of what children need can be achieved just by allowing them some freedom outside. You don’t need to go camping to get your kids running free. However, this lifestyle is naturally what children get when camping. (Assuming parents aren’t being helicopters and overly protective while camping, too.) What I love about when we’re camping is that I see tons of children walking, riding bikes, playing games in the street, and running free together, usually without an adult in sight. Campgrounds naturally lend themselves to this type of lifestyle for a few reasons:
- campers drive slower through campgrounds (or at least they’re supposed to)
- people are outside more, so if something was wrong there’s lots of campers around to notice
- kids spend nearly their whole day outside, so they’re naturally getting the benefits of being outside
- technology generally is nonexistent, or drastically reduced while camping, so children are less tempted to spend their whole day on screens.
- often friends go camping together, so children can form groups to hang and run with. There is safety in numbers.
- campgrounds tend to be set in a more nature dense area. Many are surrounded by trees, and the only evidence of human building are the paved roads, fire rings and picnic tables, and bathrooms. Naturally there are trees to climb, sticks to battle with and a wonderland for the imagination.
- with children outside, they can easily make new friends with neighbouring campers. There’s nothing like seeing a group of 20 kids at a campground all playing a game of Red Rover together.
It’s a shame that we have to schedule time away for our kids to enjoy a free childhood. It would be wonderful if the screens would just turn off, parents would let down their guards, and the kids would emerge from the bubble of their homes and actually play in the streets again, and run off into the woods together. But until then, scheduling a family camping trip can be a great way to give your children a childhood closer to what we all once had. Leave the video games at home. Put the phones down. Heck, camp somewhere without cell service if you have to. But go, and watch your children flourish when they’re given back a real childhood.
