Why Children Should Play Outdoors
When I was a child, my life was outdoors from morning until you could not see in front of you from the dark , or right after your home work is done on school days. We did not have computers or mobile phones, only a black and white tv in the corner. Our life was outside, with our friends, I lived in a town , so there were a lot of friends. on Silhouette, group of happy children playing on meadow, sunset, s Saturday afternoon the cinema would have a cowboy movie on and when it ended ,we would go to the nearest field or wooded area and become cowboys for the rest of the day, great fun. The canal was nearby ,so from may to September, all of us would go swimming in the canal, that is how we all learned to swim and very well too, as the canal was very deep.
Technology Creeps In and ruins the Children
So here we are in the new modern world, every house has several computers and many mobile phones all linked to the internet. Playtime has changed forever as parents let little Johnnie play on his computer all day long, ” it keeps him out of mischief”. This scenario is now in all the developed countries and the strangle hold effect of the computer can not be broken easily. Touch screen mobile phones are a great invention thanks to Apple, but have every teenager absolutely glued to them all day long , messaging their friends through Facebook for example and even when the friends are in the same room, conversation as an art has gone out through the window. we are bombarded by information coming through our mobiles, everywhere you look people have a mobile stuck to their face. A recent survey estimated that the average person spends 4 hours on their phones every day.
How can we get our kids to play outdoors again?
as We live in the countryside ,my answer to that problem is that we strictly limit our children,s time on the computer and anyway they are not very interested in computer games. One daughter looks at you tube tutorials to make loom band animals and the other uses it to study for school.Being strict with them from the word go has worked for us, but unfortunately other parents are not ,so they have lost out and their children will not listen to them about overuse of laptops and mobiles. In our house we have another way of keeping the children off headstreamscomputers, “PETS” and lots of them. They have dogs , cats, guinea pigs, and rabbits, which all need to be looked after and played with, this is a brilliant way to not only educate them, but also keeps them outside as well. You could always build or buy a swings adventure set and that will be guaranteed to keep them happy for many hours.
What about the bigger kids “Adults” ?
This problem does not just reside with kids, adults are just as much to blame. who buys the computers in the first place. When Apple came up with the tablet, it was hailed as another brilliant invention, but very expensive,but the Chinese soon sorted that with their cheap tablets, so now they are everywhere. I noticed the other day in a shopping mall, where a staff member in a clothes store had a tablet for all the stock checks etc and no book or pen. That really made me feel old, realising that technology has run over me like a truck. Anyway on a more positive note the Amazon Kindle is a brilliant piece of kit and one I would highly recommend to anyone. No I did not lose track of what I was writing about, I really think that ,we must educate everybody of every age about the perils of spending their lives on computers and get outside to the fresh air and go for a walk or something.
abzero:)