Badmovies.org Forum

This is an interesting piece I heard on the radio this morning about how a commercial in 1955 changed the way kids looked at play.

Toward the end of the article under Change in Play, Change in Kids there's an interesting little test they did comparing kids from 60 years ago to kids today and the results are a little shocking.


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19212514

Interesting.

When I was a small boy, about 4 or 5, I once asked my Dad "can I pretend."  He answered, "Son, you pretend until your heart's content."  I remember this conversation, every detail of it (where we were, what he was wearing), like it was yesterday.

That always struck me as one of the most "freeing" moments of my childhood.  I've TRIED to extend that same courtesy to my children.  Though they do have a fair number of 'toys,' it seems to me these only form the tools for their play time.  They both use all kinds of toys in ways that seem creative and free thinking.

We have started buying activities/games/toys from mindwareonline.com - pretty much all the toys therein have been tested as HELPING improve imagination and cognitive development. 

For example, these sets come with instructions to build certain things, but allow free-form design as well.  Imagine tinker toys or building blocks on steriods.

(http://www.mindwareonline.com/MWESTORE/Blobs/mw_34034a_s07_S.jpg)
(http://www.mindwareonline.com/MWESTORE/Blobs/32054_f06_S.jpg)
(http://www.mindwareonline.com/MWESTORE/Blobs/36230%20Box_S.jpg)

I am always wondering if what we do is "right," and believe that one of the advantages of home schooling is that we can think outside the norms a bit easier.

As a kid, we spent a lot of time in "free play."  We would pretend we were firefighters, battling our way through a burning building (in the open space of the yard).  We'd be on a boat, while a giant shark or whale attacked (climbing back and forth between a tree or two and a swingset).  We also played with toys.  We spent hours in the yard with some of the old playschool figures, building camps, exploring the "jungles" and "swamps" around them - having the figures interact.  Ditto with plastic dinosaurs and stuff.  We played with Army men, digging trenches and building bunkers.  We built a hut out of branches and grass.  We played with "Star Wars" figures in the basement for hours.  We built endless things out of Legos and Lincoln Logs.

I'm not sure that the toys hurt our play.  Is there another factor?  Maybe too much TV, instant gratification of wants, etc.  I know that quite often Jenna or Andy will say that they want something "right now" and then they have to wait.  When they are playing stuff, I see them inventing things in their minds and doing that.  I've seen them play "restaurant" with just grass and rocks.  I've seen them building imaginary houses with Andy's dump truck and front end loader.  Andy plays for hours with his toy cars, Godzilla toys, and building blocks.

I'm not certain that the toys are the issue.

I don't know what effect the toys actually have on it.  I didn't get deluged with toys the way my kids did, but I did have my share, but I think the one's I treasured most were the ones that fueled imagination.  I grew up in the 60's and mainly played WWII and Cowboys and Indians. We loved it when we got our hands of some empty boxes, because then it was time for a saloon fight. The steps to the front porch became a stagecoach, a wagon, or a half-track.  The embankment in our front yard could be a mountain or the walls of trench.

I think the prevalence of all the structured activities that parents drag their kids to are part of the problem. Kids don't seem to have time to be kids anymore.

When I was a kid, I kept my imagination to myself.  If I said anything to my parents that was even slightly illogical or fantastical, I would cop hell for it. I was told to stop being stupid and grow up.  And then I was given chores to do until I was too exhausted to think straight.

Also, I had to ensure that I was engaged in "meaningful" pursuits any time my step dad was around.  If he saw me and my sisters fooling around, he would hit the roof.  The definition of "meaningful" changed as his mood changed so it wasn't even as though we could fall back on something we knew would keep us safe from his rantings and violence.  If we buried ourselves in school work we copped it for "wasting time reading books" and yet we were expected to be straight A studens (which we never were) and copped hell for not studying enough.

When I had my son, I let him say and do what he wanted as long as he was polite and wasn't destroying anything.  It was hard for me to not yell at him for being stupid and to grow up.  But I kept my mouth shut and got involved with his crazy imagination and I'm glad for it now.

At 17 he's creative and talented and has the ability to think outside the box.  He also has fond memories of when he was little which is what I wanted for him.  Imagination is a very important thing for anyone to have.  The world would not have progressed without crazy outside the box thinking.

The real factor is the amount of activity involved with the toys.  Kids used to use their imagination, go outside almost all day, and burn up all their energy, so sitting still wasn't a problem.  Now, they sit inside all day and watch t.v. and play video games.  And because it's so dangerous outside, kids aren't allowed to be outside for 12 hours.  And THATS why childhood obesity is such a problem.  I however am 16 so I've been sitting on my can most of my life, however, I am more imaginative than most people would expect someone my age to be.  My advice to parents, have your read fantasy books and play Ledgend of Zelda games.  They will then be more imaginative if you work with it.

 

A quote from Einstein for you ,  "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

It seems like many toys are no things you do stuff with but are things that do stuff at you.   There are a lot of one-trick-pony electronic toys that promise to educate, but you just press a button and they sing or talk at you.  They are very passive playthings. 
-Ed

You're making a lot of good points, Geez.  I think the fear factor is a major reason kids aren't allowed free play -- people believe all the scare talk in the news and think there's a serial killer behind every tree. A 17-year-old girl I knew once told me that she wasn't allowed to walk to church alone because they thought she'd be kidnapped.  When I asked her how far it was from her house to the church, she said a block and a half.

Also, parents are trying to undo their childhoods on their own children and in many cases try to control every experience the kids have with that goal in mind.

Like the Baby Einstein DVD's that supposedly teach 1 year olds to read or some such?  I have often wondered what development such children parked in front of a TV are not getting - motor skills, cognitive development, etc.

When I was in fourth grade, I was tested as doing 10th grade level math and beyond 12th grade level science.  That certainly did not come from my parents pushing academics over everything else.  True, they wanted me to do well in school (I was never a straight-A student), but they never pushed 'book larnin' over creative play time once my homework was done (a different thing back then....).  I used to make toys out of every thing in the house - Mom's hair curlers were not exempt, and of course Lego was the supreme leader (I only had five pieces another boy gave me, but those five pieces could be anything from a gun to a Skil saw).  A lot of my play was derivative of sci fi movies and tv shows - STAR WARS, "Battlestart Galactica," "Star Trek," or even horror movies fighting the evil undead.  I loved to read from an early age with one of the earliest books I remember reading on my own being "How helicopters fly."

I also did a lot of work around the house growing up.  I helped Dad build things, work on cars/trucks/tractors, sow and take care of gardens, cut wood for winter, etc.  All of this helped me later in life - when I was in grad school, I had to build scientific instruments out of scrounged parts and get them to work with 'bubble gum and bailing wire,' as I had to work with virtually no operating budget til my project was funded.

We too used to play Cowboys and Indians, Cops and Robbers and War.  In our war games, every imaginary character was named "Joe."  I think we started developing basic tactics and stuff possibly needed later in life in those 'conflict' games.  We certainly had chains of command, TO&E's (based on who owned what toy gun) and the like.  I seem to remember wondering what all the fuss was about when D&D came out, doing all this stuff in pure fantasy rather than 'acting out' (also a form of fantasy, but different); I've never played it.

We played baseball without bases by saying "that clump of grass is 1st, that rock is 2nd" etc.

Once, I remember having a big wrestling match in the front yard - with no ring!  Everyone just "knew" where the ropes and turnbuckles were.  Boys would bounce of the ropes all all kinds of stuff just like the ring was "there."  The back of Dad's pickup was a great sailing ship for me, and I was Cap'n leading her into war.

Sounds like a lot of us had similar 'imaginative' experiences growing up.  And here we sit with a shared interest in B-Movies, a truly creative imaginitive outlet if there ever was one.

That article has it just about right. It's a sad situation. The story I always tell on that subject is the one about my friend's brothers, who still in elementary school back in 2000, and we had this big, neat snowfall that canceled schools, and what did they do? They sat inside and played a snowboarding game instead of going out and playing in the real snow outside.

That's horribly depressing.  If they have a dog then I'm very dissapointed in them.