Children should be able to navigate their world

Somewhere along the line it became conventional wisdom in our culture that suburbs are good for kids. Lawns are supposed to be suitable places for children to play, and the cul de sac supposedly protects them from any strangers who may be passing through. I have to admit that this has always been baffling to me. For one thing, the typical drivable low-density environment is unhealthy ... physiologically. At least that's the conclusion of the American Academy of Pediatrics, who issued a policy statement last month in favor of "building new communities that are less car dependent and making existing communities more dense" as a strategy to promote active transportation. (The AAP also makes note of the excessive death and particulate matter generated by these automobiles as well). But right now I'm concerned with a less tangible story.

After the age of five, most children want to explore the world beyond their own home and lawn. As humans, our sense of identity is often tied up with the places we inhabit, and as a child develops he wants to expand that sphere. Just as adventurers depicted in books and film push out into uncharted waters, to a young child mapping out the neighborhood park or a new street is opening the same kind of frontier. I believe this process inculcates a sense of curiousity and healthy independance that cannot be taught in school or even acquired from eduational television or video games. Can this be replicated in a world where mom or dad are required to provide shuttle service to any of these far off lands?

Children want to navigate their own social world as well. I grew up in a suburb with lots of families. We children essentially elected one kid’s lawn as the play area for sports because it was particularly flat and a little bigger than the others. So essentially we created a de facto neighborhood park, while our dads had to keep mowing our individual lawns that rarely were used (when I was a little older, I was paid to mow, which was cool). I sometimes wonder why the grown-ups didn’t just live closer together and share a real park with real ballfields within walking distance of everyone. That arrangement would seem to have made more sense if it would have been available at the time.

Children want to make their own economic decisions. I was fortunate to have grown up in a closer-in suburb. By the time I was ten, I was riding my bicycle to the Main Street of our town every Saturday with a friend. I could blow my allowance on candy or save up for a cassette tape. It was up to me. I could make my way into the shops along the street and take care of the whole customer interaction myself. It was a great way to wade into the world of adulthood ever so slightly (I was still buying Swedish Fish by the boxful after all). This was six years before I'd be granted my drivers licence, our culture's traditional passport to sudden freedom, but I wasn't going to waste any time waiting for it.

My goodness, reading this, I sound like a crotchety old man. "Back in my day ..."

But, really, I see no reason to believe that our current trajectory toward more isolated, dependent, and obese children is a necessary by-product of progress and affluence. It only takes the will to ask for different kinds of places to live in.