Should we Leave the Kids Alone

Kids need our entire attention periodically, but they don't want us to help them play. Play comes spontaneously, and is most educational and remedial when it is inner-directed. From the moment we join in (because we think that is our role) we unconsciously dominate, and change the way a child might follow on his or her own. Soon our kid is in the habit of following our guide, duped into believing he desires us for enjoyment.

My 16 minutes of fame happened in June 2008. A week earlier I'd published an academic article with the unmemorable heading "Accounting for Changeability in Mother-Child Entertainment." Christe, an enterprising author, picked up on the article and used it in a very provocative Boston Globe column. My telephone really did ring a lot in the following months and I participated as being a client in many, respectable, radio call-in shows here and abroad.

Shea's take-away message from my article was that parent-child play had been drastically oversold. I certainly hadn't argued that it was necessarily a bad thing but that we shouldn't be alarmed by its absence or fear for the mother's or child's psyche. And I expressed concern about the public promotion of parent-child play in other societies and strata of our own society where it is absent.

The thesis of my article-buttressed by many citations-was that, throughout history and in the majority of the world's cultures, adults rarely play with children. Indeed, there are many societies, carefully described by anthropologists, where babies are fed on demand, protected from danger and the elements, but not talked to or played with-and they turn out just fine. I suggested that in the last two decades, nurture had turned into nature. That is, the child-care practices of the dominant culture had become "natural." Child psychologists, textbook authors, policy makers and granting agency personnel all belong to that dominant culture and tend to see its practices and their behavior as "normal." If, however, childhood viewed using a multi-cultural lens, a very different picture emerged.

Fame was fleeting and I kept my day job, continuing to research and write about children and culture in an academic vein. But I had been rewarded by the expressions of relief and gratitude from many who called in or posted to the shows' websites. These were mothers who had felt guilty about not playing more with their children or, worse, not enjoying it when they did. And there were also many comments from members of my generation (really old) to the effect that, "My parents never played with me, nor did the parents of my peers play with their children," thus affirming my claim that this was a historically very recent phenomenon.

Of course, parent-child play is not the only innovation in the culture of childhood. Another change-not necessarily an improvement-has been the diminution in children's free play in the outdoors.

There was a few excellent chemistry at work as students and reformers found common ground. I came away with the conviction that there were classes for modern parents in the parenting practices of native peoples-something I've studied for more than 39 years. Casting about for an appropriate name, it struck me that the main difference between the lives of town children and our cherubs is that the previous have so much more liberty, a condition captured by the saying "benign neglect."

Several of us are wising up and realizing that it's fruitless for us to usually play with kids (because, for one, we have to then resort to placing children before TV to get a break) and much less creative and educational for the kids, who need time and practice inventing, self-initiating, daydreaming.

Copyright by Lucy who likes shopping online, going fishing, often searches discount coach purses and nike air max ltd on the Internet.