The nature of childhood has greatly changed in the past 20 years. A sudden rise in childhood obesity, diabetes, and Attention Deficit plagues America. I have noticed a remarkable trend in the way we raise children as well. Childhood no longer compromises fun-filled days outdoors, running wild in the sunshine. People look askance at a bruised, beat up kid and safety has become an obsession.

One summer day, many years ago, I took my boys for a doctor’s appointment, embarrassed to have her see them in their shorts. Their legs looked awful with cuts, bruises, brush burns and bug bites. But our pediatrician laughed and said that beat up legs from the knee down indicate a healthy child!

Those nasty-looking legs told her that the boys spent a lot of time out doors, running, climbing and getting plenty of exercise and Vitamin D. Too many children, nowadays, suffer from obesity, attention deficit, and learning problems. They spend too much time in front of the TV and not enough time running wild. When they do get exercise, it’s under adult supervision in clubs or organized sports.

Free play develops a child’s sense of self-sufficiency. When they play with neighborhood kids, they learn how to cope with other peoples’ personalities, how to solve problems, how to organize group activities and how to think for themselves.

Children who play without constant adult supervision quickly establish order in their activities, set rules and take a firm stance against antisocial behaviors. A child who bullies, hits or steals is usually shunned until the offender decides to cooperate.  Free play develops a child's imagination and natural curiosity. It engenders an interest in nature and science. Children who engage in free play rarely complain of boredom because they are allowed to develop their own interests led by their own innate creativity.

Healthy children watch little or no TV. TV stifles creativity. Someone else does the thinking for them and that someone is generally trying to sell them something. TV programs would not exist without the advertising that pays for them.

Studies show that poor scores on achievement tests have a direct correlation to the amount to TV that a child watches. Learning is a multi-sensory event. Language develops through interaction as evidenced by the continued prevalence of regional dialects. If children learned language by watching TV, even educational TV, they would not grown up speaking with, say, a southern accent.

Children who watch too much TV become passive. Their eyes grow used to staring at a fixed spot. Watching hours of TV stifles sensory and muscular development so important to physical and mental growth. The quickly changing images sabotage a child’s ability to focus attention for longer than a few seconds so that, if effect, the brain is trained away from concentration.

Our obsession with safety has resulted in fat, lazy, sick children; the opposite of the intent. A strong, healthy individual takes some (not excessive) risks and learns to make choices and decisions independently. It can seem frightening in this day and age, to allow children out of our sight, out of the realm of our direct influence. But the world has never been safe. We just learn how to negotiate through it.

Free your children – allow them to learn and grow, to play, to exercise and think for themselves and become fully round, healthy individuals!