Taking Back Childhood: What Our Kids Are Losing — and How to Get It Back
Economic and time pressures on parents are leading them to quick-fix approaches to discipline and to rely on “electronic babysitters” like TVs, Gameboys and Xboxes. An overemphasis on standardized tests in our schools is robbing children of genuine learning opportunities and resulting in the loss of unstructured play, arts activities and social time, all of which are essential to their well-being. Childhood as we know it is being stolen from our children, and it is time for us, as concerned parents, grandparents and citizens, to take it back.
This book will explore how the social currents described above are threatening three basic needs of childhood — children’s need for creative play, for security and for positive relationships with adults and other children. It will also offer many steps we adults can take to restore these essential building blocks of healthy child development. I will share my years of experience as a child development professor and lifelong observer of children — not only of my own, but also children in classrooms and communities across the nation and the globe. I will also present stories from the many parents I interviewed for this book over the course of two years, beginning in June 2003. These moms and dads — racially and ethnically diverse, young and older, from urban, suburban and rural areas — told me about the challenges they face as parents in today’s world. I gained much insight from these conversations and have many stories to share in the pages ahead — stories that I hope you will find helpful and relevant to your own experiences raising kids. 
Many of the parents I interviewed described the world they grew up in as remarkably different from the one their own kids face today. Rob, a 45-year-old father from New York, said he played outside “all day long” as a child. “We had a neighborhood gang. We all played together — mostly I remember a game we made up called ‘Capture.’ The rules kept changing, but basically you had to hide and then run like heck if someone found you,” he recalled.
Mary Kay, a mother from Connecticut with four daughters, told me how she loved walking home from school because she could “process the day and unwind. I remember the trees,” she said, “when the leaves would change — and the dogwoods — when they bloomed they made a beautiful umbrella over me.”
J.B., a dad who grew up in Florida, said, “We played in the streets. I don’t remember watching TV when I was young. Our family played games at night after dinner.” And David, who drives a cab in Boston and has two sons a generation apart (Errol is 42 years old and Malcolm is 13) said, “My older kid roamed and ran outside, chased garter snakes and grasshoppers. Kids would come to the house and they’d want to go outside. But now kids want to stay inside! They aren’t connecting to a lot of things. They’re being fed through a screen. They want to be on the computer all the time. What the TV says, they think that’s what it is.”
Just as David and so many parents realize, today’s fast-paced technology- and media-saturated society is undermining an integral part of childhood, namely direct experiences with real world — with peers, with adults and with activities of all kinds. In order to learn and grow, children need to connect — to their own creativity and initiative, to each other, to family and to nature. When Rob and his pals played “Capture,” they were inventing and negotiating the rules of their game, problem solving and using their imaginations. New developments in brain research suggest that neurons grow and connect in the brain as children actively engage in this kind of play. Science, therefore, confirms what we know intuitively: that creative play is essential to the development of healthy minds.
Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Ed.D., is a professor of early childhood education and conflict resolution at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass. She is an ongoing consultant for several PBS kids’ shows, as well as an active public speaker and guest lecturer across the country. Her work has been featured in Time, The Wall Street Journal, Parenting, Mothering and USA Today and on NPR, the Discovery Channel and ABC. For more info about this author please visit www.nancycarlssonpaige.org. This article is excerpted from “TAKING BACK CHILDHOOD: A Proven Road Map for Raising Confident, Creative, Compassionate Kids” by Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Ed.D. Published by arrangement with Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Copyright © Nancy Carlsson-Paige, 2006.
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