From toys to tag, kids need to play

There's nothing like the staying power of classic toys and games. Adults love them for the memories, and kids just can't stop playing them.

The classics are on my mind for several reasons. As I mentioned earlier, this is the week that the Strong National Museum of Play in the U.S. inducts two new toys into its National Toy Hall of Fame. The criteria: a toy's longevity over multiple generations; the ability to foster creativity, learning or discovery; and innovation in changing the nature of play.

And the winners, announced today, are . . . .

Easy Bake Oven, the toy I always longed for and never got. Launched in 1963 and inspired by the pretzel vendors of New York City, it's the toy stove that actually cooks things. And it's still going strong.

Lionel Trains, which have been chugging around in circles in family basements and dens for more than a century. Little boys love trains. I'm sure girls do too, though when Lionel tried to lure them by introducing a pastel train set in 1957, it flopped. Mind you, who wouldn't turn up their nose at a pink train?

There's a lot more to the art of playing than simply having a great toy though. Take the game of tag, for instance. It has all the right elements: no equipment, no age limit, no time constraints, and hardly any rules.

Sad then, that the beloved childhood pastime has come under such fire lately. Earlier this term, a school in Massachusetts officially banned the game, setting off debates across the U.S. and here in Canada.

I'm not surprised. A few years back our local school routinely sent out lists of all the things kids were not allowed to do in the playground. "Chasing" was always among them. Which is pretty much the only way to define the game of tag.

As this article in the Los Angeles Times explains, the whole brouhaha is at the nexus of three competing interests: "giving kids freedom to play (what many teachers and kids want); keeping them safe from harm on large, unruly playgrounds (what concerned parents want); and avoiding band-aid related depositions (what all administrators want)."

Of course, as anyone who has ever spent time with a group of kids knows, there are some games - like tag - that kids just seem hardwired to play.

"It's one of the few games left where the adults have absolutely nothing to do with it," psychologist Fred Frankel of UCLA told the Times. "Kids transmit it from generation to generation and spontaneously organize it."

So it's hard to imagine the game of tag will ever become extinct, no matter what the grownups say.

In the meantime, I hope before any other organizations rush to pull the reins on children for safety reasons that they at least pay attention to the latest research from the Canadian Council on Learning.

The not-for-profit research group said today that Canadian kids are involved in so many organized lessons and structured sports that they are losing out on the benefits of spontaneous free play, which is critical to healthy physical and psychological development.

The current issue of the council's online publication Lessons in Learning looks at how parents can support development of their kids' intellectual, emotional, social and physical skills by ensuring there's enough time for free play that serves the child's purposes - and not the adult's.

You could take that to mean tag in the park over organized soccer. Or maybe even some time fiddling around with a train set or an Easy Bake Oven.

Another dose of nostalgia

If you're in the mood for another trip down memory lane, check out the website for the Strong National Museum of Play. The Rochester museum is devoted to the study of play and is a fascinating place to visit online or in person as part of a family holiday.

Especially cool to kids - including grownup ones - is the National Toy Hall of Fame, which features playthings with multi-generational staying power, and which foster learning, creativity and discovery. Raggedy Anne, Silly-Putty, alphabet blocks, the wagon, the jack-in-the-box, the teddy bear and the rocking horse have taken their rightful places there, to name a few.

This Thursday, two more toys will be inducted from a list of a dozen nominees that include:

Atari Game System
Big Wheel
Easy Bake Oven
Lite-Brite
Fisher-Price Little People
Hot Wheels
Lionel Trains
Operation (the game)
PEZ Candy Dispenser
the rubber duck
the skateboard
Twister

Care to guess which two will make it? Check back here Thursday for the results.

The way kids were

Not to glorify the past. Not to idealize bygone eras. But just because you may smile in recognition, if you're of a certain age. That is, a kid who grew up in the '50s or '60s.

A time when, as Bill Bryson describes in his new memoir The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, days were so long and so little occurred, "you were prepared to invest long periods in just sitting and watching things on the off chance that something diverting might happen."

Children lived outside. They were barely supervised. They were somehow seen as indestructible, with no car seats, bike helmets, safety caps on medicine bottles, air bags, or smoke detectors to protect them. They ate red meat and sugar and drank water from the tap.

And they had time. Precious time. Which Bryson illustrates masterfully:

Other long periods of the day were devoted to just seeing what would happen - what would happen if you pinched a match head while it was still hot or made a vile drink and took a sip of it or focused a white-hot beam of sunlight with a magnifying glass on your Uncle Dick's bald spot while he was napping . . .

Thanks to such investigations and the abundance of time that made them possible, I knew more things in the first ten years of my life than I believe I have known at any time since. I knew everything there was to know about our house for a start. I knew what was written on the undersides of tables and what the view was like from the tops of bookcases and wardrobes. I knew what was to be found at the back of every closet, which beds had the most dust balls beneath them, which ceilings the most interesting stains, where exactly the patterns in wallpaper repeated. I knew how to cross every room in the house without touching the floor, where my father kept his spare change and how much you could safely take without his noticing (one-seventh of the quarters, one-fifth of the nickels and dimes, as many of the pennies as you could carry). I knew how to relax in an armchair in more than one hundred positions and on the floor in approximately seventy-five more. I knew what the world looked like when viewed through a Jell-O lens. I knew how things tasted - damp washclothes, pencil ferrules, coins and buttons, almost anything made of plastic that was smaller than, say, a clock radio, mucus of every variety of course - in a way that I have more or less forgotten now. I knew and could take you at once to any illustration of naked women anywhere in our house, from a Rubens painting of fleshy chubbos in Masterpieces of World Painting to a cartoon by Peter Arno in the latest issue of The New Yorker to my father's small private library of girlie magazines in a secret place known only to him, me, and 111 of my closest friends in his bedroom.

I knew how to get between any two properties in the neighborhood, however tall the fence or impenetrable the hedge that separated them. I knew the cool feel of linoleum on bare skin and what everything smelled like at floor level. I knew pain the way you know it when it is fresh and interesting - the pain, for example, of a toasted marshmallow in your mouth when its interior is roughly the same temperature and consistency of magma. I knew exactly how clouds drifted on a July afternoon, what rain tasted like, how ladybugs preened and caterpillars rippled, what it felt like to sit inside a bush. I knew how to appreciate a really good fart, whether mine or someone else's.

Remember?

The Babysitting Hall of Fame

With apologies to Carly Simon, I would definitely sit by the phone for Jesse. In fact I have. Many times. Just crossing my fingers he'd return my call and say he was available.

Jesse looked after my boys. For one whole summer, and then occasional evenings and after-school stints. To call him a babysitter is kind of like calling Roger Clemens a guy who plays catch. Jesse is the superstar of babysitters. The kind of guy you dream about when you have a crop of brawling, wriggling, snakes 'n' snails and puppy dog tails kind of offspring to keep busy. A fellow who's more fun than a giant ferris wheel in the dark, more engaging than pulling the wings off flies.

Was, I should say. Jesse was in university then, but now he's all grown up, goes to work Monday to Friday and even wears a suit. He dropped by the other day. Helped himself to some fruit, compared notes on the best Simpsons episodes, surveyed the recent home repairs. It reminded us all of the good old days, when morning didn't truly begin until you could hear the clomp of his big feet on the stairs as he hauled his bike onto the front porch.

In the dying days of summer, when patience and ideas tend to run short, allow me to fondly recall some of Jesse's legendary and no-cost activities:

• Word of the day: Every morning, each kid got a word. Either Jesse or the dictionary explained what it meant and then they had to practise using it a few times. By day's end, if they still remembered it, they won. No prize or anything. They just won. That was enough to keep them interested. This explains why the youngest, then 7, started using phrases like "I'm just being facetious" at the dinner table. Once, when this same child ran too close to home plate and the tip of the bat caught him in the cheek, the next morning's word of the day was hematoma. Don't they call that a teachable moment?
• Get to know your community: This includes the cemetery (on foot or bikes or scooters), the fire station, even the mother's workplace. But the undisputed favourite was the tour of the local police station, including the inside of prisoners' cells. Who knew you could actually do such a thing? Well Jesse did. He phoned in advance and set it up and the kids still talk about it.
• Celebrating the animal kingdom: Mostly, this involved weekly visits to Jesse's friend with the snake. Not sure what kind. But it was big. And hungry, with the kind of appetite that involved small rodents. I never wanted to know more than that. But little boys love this stuff. When the reptile was unavailable for viewings, they took the subway to the pet store to gaze longingly at the puppies and whistle at the birds and learn the difference between guppies and goldfish.
• Crunching numbers: One evening I arrived home post-bedtime to the sound of little voices upstairs. They sat cross-legged on their bedroom floor, eyes fixed on the mirrored closet doors, which Jesse had covered with math problems and upon which he was frantically scribbling down the answers they shouted out. Wish I could say I had thought of this clever way to employ Crayola window markers. Also wish I could say they still resist bedtime in favour of doing math.

It's sad Jesse has moved on. But his example lingers. Along with our hopes that his once-upon-a-time young charges will follow it.

NO, summer is not over

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to go AWOL for so many days. It was not the plan. Yes, there was some delicious holiday time somewhere in there. Then kids coming and going, a long weekend, an out-of-town visitor and newspaper deadlines to meet. The result being a dreadful breach of blog etiquette. My bad.

Just because it's been awhile though, don't go thinking that I'm over my earlier grumpiness about what's currently on display in store windows across the city. You'd think that by now I might have gotten used to the grossly premature back-to-school marketing blitz that I whined about last month (before the summer was half over). Nope. And it doesn't help that two press kits about Christmas products just landed on my desk. At least I'm not the only one who's irritated. Check out this great rant.

But how comforting it was this week - amid the piles of back-to-school inserts falling out of the newspapers - to come across this intelligent approach to helping your kids prepare for September. It's written by Karen Sencich, one of the most practical and helpful folks I've ever come across. (Scroll down her Havoc to Harmony website until you find the entry called "The New Year.") Sencich, who has two kids and a flourishing business as a professional organizer, distinguishes herself by being grounded in reality rather than perfectionism when it comes to dispensing advice. In other words, she thinks like a mom.

Her take on back-to-school is NOT about buying jean jackets or Dora lunchbags or Crayola markers. Instead of tips for heading to the mall and opening your wallet, Sencich gets at the heart of what the dog days of summer should really be about: helping kids prepare mentally and emotionally for the transition. That could mean gently prepping a Grade 1 child for her first experience of recess by visiting the schoolyard, taking a test run of the public transit route to middle school, or teaching a teen the finer points of laundry to prepare for dormitory living. But as Sencich notes, there are plenty of ways to do that without spoiling what's left of August or wishing the summer away:

"Don’t make a big deal about all of this or add to the hysteria of the 'back to school hype.' I’m suggesting that you subtly integrate these life lessons into your daily routine. Everyone will benefit."

Now there's a back-to-school message worth listening to.

"There's nothing to do around here!"

It's week two. Are they bored silly yet? Driving you mad?

Maybe it's time for a little Joan Craven. She's an Alberta mother, grandma, former kindergarten teacher and farm girl who has no shortage of ideas for keeping your little livewires busy, inside in the rain, or outside in the sunshine. And we're talking about simple things that yes, we parents should be able to figure out by ourselves. But sometimes we're just too damned tired, frazzled or fed up to think of them.

What's that, you say? Whatever happened to kids figuring it out themselves? As we did? I share your pain. But the truth is, these days they need a push. Need the grownups to get them going. After all, they've been raised in a world where Gameboy and Dora are constantly beckoning, parents are time-pressed, childhood is structured and arranged for them, and too many toys and gadgets have stultified little imaginations.

Grownups need a push too, it seems. How else to account for the fact that every June, the parenting magazines get my teeth grinding with their summertime guides on steps for how to throw balls, fly kites, play tag and build sandcastles. How sad is that?

But back to Craven, whose book What Can I Do Today? is chock full of no-cost activities for kids aged 2 to 7. The book, laid out in kid-friendly format with an idea for each day of the calendar year, costs $17.95 and you can check it out and order it online. (Your sequential-minded orderly child will love the activity-per-day approach while the freewheelers will want to flip through and pick whatever strikes their fancy.)

Ideas range from a variety of memory games to shadow-tracing with sidewalk chalk. Remember how much kids love forts? Just throw a sheet over the kitchen table and get them to add their own furniture and pillows. Obstacle courses, indoor sand tables using cornmeal, rhyme games, window-washing. All ways to kill time involving stuff that's already in the house.

Craven herself says it's not rocket science. Flip through the book and you'll probably find yourself saying, "oh yeah, I remember that" or "why didn't I think of that myself." But that's the whole idea - she hopes her book will be a starting point for stressed parents who often can't think on their feet when the inevitable whine of "there's nothing to do" starts to echo around the house.

As an educator, Craven knows that to grow and develop, kids need to interact with their environment, use their five senses and play, play, play. With their friends or siblings, alone with their imaginations, and sometimes with adults.

"Hopefully, we can get parents and caregivers talking about the simple things you can do with kids rather than the complicated expensive things," she said today over the telephone from North Bay, where she has stopped amid her cross-country tour to meet families and hit kids' bookstores. She's collecting new ideas along the way and posting them regularly on her website.

After overcoming my initial skepticism and perusing the book, I'm decidedly in the mood to lie in the grass and look at cloud shapes or haul out some empty shoeboxes or sculpt my my name out of dried pasta. Sigh. Now, if only she'd come up with a version for teenagers . . .

Going buggy in the summer

I had almost forgotten about the bug jars. But it came over me in a wave yesterday, while mucking about in my marshy memories of summers at home with little kids.

Giant jars, tiny jars, plastic ones that once housed peanut butter and their glass counterparts for jam, which have way better lids for hammering holes in. They lined the counter some days and believe me, you can get used to cooking mac and cheese with crickets chirping over the noise of the kitchen fan and worms wriggling in the dirt beside you.

Watching and collecting creepy crawlies is an awesome summer pastime, capable of killing hours of boredom in all kinds of weather - through the hunting, the feeding, the watching, the freshening up of the critters' homes with fresh grass and dirt. And just think of all the teachable moments. Ladybugs and caterpillars are good to track in sunshine, worms and snails after rain. All the kiddies need is a shovel and pail. And some patience.

And then, when all is said and done and kids and creatures are snug in their beds, you have no end of storybooks to enhance your daytime theme. You know Eric Carle from The Very Hungry Caterpillar of course. He's created a whole bunch of other endearing wee characters too, from The Very Busy Spider to The Grouchy Ladybug to The Very Clumsy Click Beetle. But there are a whole colony of others to choose from - look here - and plenty of great rhymes by poets like Jack Prelutsky ("Bugs! Bugs!" in A Pizza the Size of the Sun).

Kids who are ready to take a more scientific approach will love Eyewitness Books like Insect or Pond and River or other bug anthologies.

You don't have to actually catch creatures to make an afternoon of it either. I used to kick my kids out to the backyard or front porch to watch spiders construct masterpieces, just like Charlotte. (Yes, I know spiders aren't insects). Ladybugs were usually left to fly away home. But some, you just can't resist bringing home for a few days.

Here are my favourites:

Caterpillars: If you're lucky, and very patient, you can actually watch the entire metamorphosis. Who knew? I never would have guessed, until early one morning I heard the oohs and aahs of a three-year-old who had spent many days staring hopefully at a pair of cocoons, diligently refreshing their jar with droplets of water and leaves. He waited. And waited. While his mother quietly hoped he would give up and forget. And then one day, there they were. Brilliant blue and orange wings flapping inside the glass. We took pictures while he stood in the centre of the lawn, opened the lid and watched them fly away to freedom.

Ants: I hate spending money on stuff you can make yourself. But when it comes to these eensy-weensy creatures, it's worth investing in one of these very cool ant farms. For $12.95 - the cost of renting a couple of DVDs - you get many more hours of entertainment. First, the kids have to fill it with sand and get it all ready. Then, they have to go outside and find the ants and collect them. Believe me, persuading them to get inside the container is no, ahem, picnic. But once the frantic fellows have settled down, you'll be hooked. And there's all that exemplary behaviour on display - co-operation, determination, sharing, enterprise. Then read aloud Elinor J. Pinczes' One Hundred Hungry Ants. It's got great rhythm. There's even a math lesson in there somewhere.

Crickets: These guys are so cheerful to have around. And fascinating too. If the kids look closely, they'll soon figure out that crickets don't make those chirps with their mouths. Complementary reading: Carle's The Very Quiet Cricket.

Snails: Go hunting for these in the garden after rain. Put them in a nice jar with some water and lettuce. There is nothing cuter and if you don't believe me, find your copy of Hurry Up Franklin with Brenda Clark's brilliant illustrations. That face. Those antennae! The more the merrier.

Now, get out in the mud.

Trainspotting

The following also appears in the Life Section of today's Toronto Star, as part of a regular monthly column.

It takes a lot to impress the generation raised on MSN and Disney special effects. But a freight train thundering past the foot of the bed will do it.

On the north shore of Lake Superior, in a haven of Canadiana called Rossport, tiny cabins face the sparkling waters. And in between, a stone’s throw away, the railway tracks that long, long ago were stubbornly pummelled onto the Canadian Shield.

A crop of kids and too many years of sleep deprivation have left us with little patience for being woken up. But on this magical July evening, we were happy to pay for the privilege.

Can’t you hear the whistle blowing,
Rise up so early in the morn!

Oh yeah, and half-a-dozen times overnight. Is there any choice, once the beds start to shimmy and the windows rattle? You simply can’t resist leaping up to peer through the screen door into the inky sky, listen to the clackety-clack and feel the wind brush your cheeks as the mighty beast chugs by.

There’s not much sleep to be had here, but you can’t get any closer to the national dream.

At breakfast, the hotel guests, a potpourri of middle-aged bikers with tattoos and gleaming Harleys, a couple of families and a sprinkling of empty-nesters, compare notes over high stacks of pancakes and — of course — Canadian maple syrup.

“Mum, that girl from Ottawa? She slept through every single train!”

Later, the innkeeper with the twinkle in his eye — who years ago sailed across the roiling Great Lake waters from Michigan and never went back — takes the boys down to the tracks. Shows them how to tape their pennies to the rails. Tells them about the railway guy who sometimes hides in the woods with his radar gun to catch speeding trains.

Hear that faraway whistle? That means the next one is six minutes away.

Kids these days. All short attention spans and instant gratification. But beside the iron road that runs from sea to sea, they sit patiently. Waiting. Listening. Feeling the rumble build beneath their feet. Off in the distance I think I can I think I can I think I can. And then! The glint of sun on metal. Around the bend it shrieks. You can be ready, but it never fails to make you jump.

Little boys wave until the last car is a speck on the horizon.

What is it about children and trains? Brio. Electric train sets. Thomas the Tank Engine and Gordon and Percy.

But nothing, nothing, captivates like the real thing.

Around the north shore, the trains are never far away, following us through Marathon, Terrace Bay, Schreiber. Even if they aren’t in sight, you can always hear them. They snake their way around rocky cliffs at Neys Provincial Park, high above the beaches soft as baby powder and littered with sun-bleached driftwood piled up like so many dinosaur bones.

“Look, there’s another one!”

The record was 109 cars, at the Lakehead. The 10-year-old counted. That’s a lot of logs and wheat and auto parts. A lot of spikes and railway ties, teardrops and toil.

This is summer holidays. No history lessons, puh-leeze. But — how old did you say those train tracks are? Who swung all those hammers? It took them how long?

Driving down the highway, they want to hear that song again. You know, the one about a time when the green dark forest was too silent to be real.

Back home in Toronto, we only see subways. Not so many big skies and open spaces.

But there on the dressers sit the discs of smooth shiny copper. Look closely and you can just make out the barest outline of a maple leaf.

Time to face that failing grade

When the mark on the report card is less than inspiring and the student in question (as in, my kid) is less than inspired, I usually stick to messages about the big picture. Like: it's all about the trendline buddy. I promise not to get bent out of shape about the mark, as long as you start turning this sucker around.

Well, there's not much disguising the trendline in the latest report card from Active Healthy Kids Canada, which yesterday awarded a big fat D for physical fitness among Canadian kids. There is no trendline. It's just as lousy as last year, which was the first time the advocacy organization launched the annual report. In all fairness, the group does acknowledge that it's hard to expect much change in only one year. But at the same time, while childhood obesity and fitness concerns have been ranking right up there in the headlines with war and terrorism, the organization hasn't found much improvement by any measure.

The report is definitely worth reading, even if you don't have kids. Because it probes so many factors that affect our daily activity levels, from socio-economic status to technology to "playable" neighbourhoods. You can download and read it here.

There's a lot to digest in the 44 pages, and I plan to revisit it in coming weeks. But for now, here are a few questions that we parents can start asking ourselves about the messages we pass along to our kids about fitness. And if they seem like no-brainers, how come I find myself saying "ouch" more than once?

1) Do you model physical activity? i.e. Do you park yourself in a field chair to watch the kids play soccer, or do you at least jog around the field a few times first. And am I the only one who puts driving the kids around to all their activities ahead of my own time to walk or rollerblade or go to the gym?

2) Do you try to make your kids stick to the doctor-recommended daily maximum of two hours a day on screentime - one hour a day for preschoolers? Sounds easy, doesn't it, but according to the report, less than 20 per cent of kids are meeting those guidelines. Think about it. One Harry Potter movie or NHL playoff game will put them well over - before you even get to the MSN. Scary huh?

3) Do you try to make physical activity part of daily living? That means getting the kids to walk, bike or scooter to school or a friend's house, sending them to the store for milk and encouraging them to play outside without adults. Or getting them to rake leaves, shovel snow or carry the groceries. Yeah, I know. Sometimes it's too damn tempting to  forgo the nagging and just do it yourself.

4) If your kids are among the 50 per cent or so involved in structured sports two or three times a week, are you deluding yourself into thinking this is enough physical activity? Ninety minutes a day is the recommended amount. Organized sports tend to feel like a whole lot more than they actually are when you add on the time for getting into uniform and transportation (sometimes across town). But take away that plus all the time they're sitting on the sidelines or the bench when it's someone else's turn to play, and it doesn't add up to nearly as much moving around as you may think.

Life is time-challenged and complicated but the solutions don't have to be. As the report notes, "simple ways of being active need to be better understood and to become valued and ingrained in behaviour."

What do you think? In a culture so obsessed with convenience and technology, what will it take to get people moving again in their daily lives? Are the recommended screentimes realistic for school age kids and teens?

Making child's play a parent's business

I grew up building forts in the ravine, cartwheeling across the park, and trampling flowerbeds during neighbourhood games of hide and seek.

Today, kids play organized soccer at age 5 and learn to touch their toes in Pilates classes. And according to this recent story in the Chicago Tribune (it's free but time-consuming to register for the online Tribune), they also go to the gym with their parents to work out on pint-sized elliptical trainers, treadmills and stationary bikes. In other words, staying fit and active has become a job - even for children.

Silken Laumann, Canada's rowing goddess, Olympic bronze medallist and now champion of children's play, despairs of this. So do I. Especially when I am breaking up indoor wrestling matches, yanking the television cable from the wall and forcefully escorting able-bodied young males out the back door. Or getting behind the wheel 20 times a weekend to ferry them to an arena or soccer field. There's a lot to be said for the days when parents yelled to get their children to come inside.

Laumann thinks we should try and recapture that. And she outlines why in her new book Child's Play: Rediscovering the Joy of Play in Our Families and Our Communities.  You've heard it all before, from the mounting health threats faced by a generation of little fatties to the need for free play to stimulate imagination and promote fitness. And who could dispute the benefits of kick-the-can over two hours on the X-box?

That said, it's great that a high-profile athlete and mother who's passionate about the issue is making the case and urging parents to lead the way back to the playground.

But that last bit is the part of the message I stumble on - the idea that the adults should be out there organizing the neighbours, hauling the kids off to the park, trying to remember the skipping rhymes and forming the teams for Capture the Flag. She has some great ideas for adults willing and able to do that - like starting regular "Play in the Park" days in the neighbourhood. But lots of parents can't. Maybe they work nights or weekends, or they're single parents with a younger child asleep in the house. Or they speak a different language. Perhaps they don't even live near a safe park. Or they are just too tired between working, getting the dinner on and cleaning the bathroom. And then there are those of us who just want the kids to go away and play so we can get a minute's peace.

Besides, doesn't having adults around defeat much of the purpose of child's play? The real joy in playing outside when I was a kid was the freedom. It was in getting the heck away from the parents. A lot of the learning was because of that too. You had to improvise, settle disputes (or face the consequences), problem-solve and be creative because there was no parent there to figure it out. Grownups didn't teach you the words to "Apples, peaches, pears and plums" or the rules for Red Rover. Those just got passed down by the older kids without anyone even realizing it.

This is a social issue that goes beyond just putting the onus on parents. The whole culture is responsible for excising movement from our daily lives. We don't have to run upstairs to answer the phone thanks to portables. There's no need to get up to change the TV channel or the CD or to open the garage door. We don't even need to use our arm muscles to chop vegetables or knead dough. We've built suburbs that make it hard for folks to get around on foot or by bike.

And how about our obsession with trying to create a "risk-free" environment where no one climbs a "dangerous" tree or treads beyond the property line or is allowed to play tag in the school yard or walks to school unaccompanied for fear of abduction.

Laumann issues a rallying call to re-instill the culture of play for our children. She notes that once upon a time women routinely smoke and drank through pregnancy, kids weren't buckled into car seats and only a small percentage of mothers breastfed their babies. But public education and public will shifted those behaviours dramatically. And she's hoping to push us to the tipping point on kids and play.

I hope Laumann can do it. I applaud her efforts.

But then I hope all the grownups stand back and leave the kids to their own devices.