By Kristina Leidums
With the sunny, warm, spring-like weather last weekend, my children and I hopped on our bikes in search of some other Wynndel kids to play with. The roads were bare, our mitts were off, and we set off with no intention of where to end up. Part way up the big Wynndel Road hill we decided to drop in on some friends, hoping we’d find them at home. We did and found a quiet stretch of road where the kids could zip around on their bikes while the adults chatted.
I’ve been reading and thinking a lot about neighbourhood play, and hoping it is still alive and well around Creston. As a child growing up in Ontario, our neighbourhood was packed full of kids roaming on bikes, skipping rope in cul de sacs, and catching frogs in ponds. In the 1990s, we still had a pretty good free reign of the neighbourhood and ‘come home at supper’ instructions from our parents. We biked, played catch, hopped on Pogo Balls, skipped with Skip-Its, ran, played hopscotch and tobogganed endlessly in the winter. I believe that this early freedom to roam helped me to connect with nature, leading to my lifelong passion for the outdoor world. We had scraggly patches of forest to play in, empty lots and ponds to explore. As I got older, my dog and I spent countless hours exploring trails and finding big maple trees to sit underneath.
In your Creston neighbourhood, are there kids out riding bikes on sunny (or rainy!) weekend days, or after school? Are kids out kicking balls around, playing catch and knocking on doors looking for playmates? (‘Hi, Mrs. B, can Ben come out to play…?) Are they messing about in a trickling creek between yards or at a nearby park or empty lot? I know that times have changed and that this kind of unstructured play isn’t as prevalent as it once was (for a whole variety of reasons, many that I’m sure you can imagine). Families are busy with work, school, and extracurricular activities. Parents tend to keep a closer reign on kids than was common in the past.
I truly believe that on our blocks and in our neighbourhoods, that we could and should make free play as important and valued an activity as swimming lessons or judo or art classes. Consider the lessons learned during outdoor play with a group of neighborhood children, of self-reliance, independence, resilience, and confidence-building. And of course, the benefits of reduced screen-use increased exercise and fresh air. Introduce children to their neighbours, pointing out helpful ones they can turn to in the event of needing something (a phone call home or a drink of water because they’ve been playing so hard!). You can scaffold their ‘roaming’ based on their sense of road safety and maturity.
Let’s look to our neighbourhoods this spring and summer to help encourage kids of all ages to get outdoors!