I badly wanted my kids to have the kind of free-range childhood I had, where my brother and I roamed the neighborhood in the afternoons, weekends, and all summer, playing wide-ranging imaginative games with a mixed-age group of kids. But it was impossible in our NJ suburb. All the other kids, from a very young age, were busy with sports,…
I badly wanted my kids to have the kind of free-range childhood I had, where my brother and I roamed the neighborhood in the afternoons, weekends, and all summer, playing wide-ranging imaginative games with a mixed-age group of kids. But it was impossible in our NJ suburb. All the other kids, from a very young age, were busy with sports, classes, camp, and other schedules and adult-supervised activities. The streets were a ghost town after school. The only way my kids could interact with other kids was for me to enroll them in activities too.
I badly wanted my kids to have the kind of free-range childhood I had, where my brother and I roamed the neighborhood in the afternoons, weekends, and all summer, playing wide-ranging imaginative games with a mixed-age group of kids. But it was impossible in our NJ suburb. All the other kids, from a very young age, were busy with sports, classes, camp, and other schedules and adult-supervised activities. The streets were a ghost town after school. The only way my kids could interact with other kids was for me to enroll them in activities too.