Neighborhood PlayDates
A
Fun Neighborhood Activity
Build a Fort or Native American Long House
The sad truth about
children living in our contemporary world is
that their childhood years, the most magical
and powerful, character-building, creatively
resourceful, problem-solving, socially-developing
years are being over-booked with competitive
sports, demanding lessons and highly organized
activities. And for many other children, those
who's families are not able to afford such luxuries,
they go to the opposite extreme of unstructured
days whittling away their precious lives glued
to the TV, computers or playing electronic games,
in isolation. It seems that it is the rare child
who has the support of a neighborhood and the
sense of community that once was something we
probably took for granted.
So many kids in this generation
are play deprived! The simple truth is that
these children are victims of our over-stressed,
over-complicated, demanding lives. With two
income families struggling to hold everything
together, while at the same time trying to stay
on top of technology, and the emotionally draining
responsibilities so many families have trying
to care for aging parents, time problems associated
with having longer and longer commutes, along
with many other time -consuming life- style
issues, we have lost what is simple and natural.
Our children have lost what is
simple and natural...and before we know it ,their
precious childhood years will be gone. It seems
that most people either overlook this sad truth,
or they dismiss it as unimportant. I have even
heard some people say playing is a waste of
time for those years when a child's learning
capacity is more important to stimulate than
any other kind of recreation, and that children's
recess time on the school playground is adequate
for their interaction time with their peers.
And although I am grateful for any kind of kid-to-kid
encounters, I strongly feel that there is great
benefit in the casual, unstructured play of
children.
I would like to mention that there
are some very powerful and superbly staffed
organizations who also believe in play. These
wonderful organizations seek
Corporate sponsors, Educational Institutions
and Community based funds to make incredible
opportunities available for our children to
experience. There are Cultural Foundations,
City Events....Grass Roots groups who with full-blown
enthusiasm have given our families some extraordinary
ideas. Never before have there been so many
wonderful kinds of options to really enrich
our lives, but as great as these events are,
they do not provide the kinds of interactions
that simple play provides.
As a mother living in a semi-rural
situation, I have learned to overcome some very
challenging road blocks to having simple play
as part of our lives. I have had to constantly
import children to my home as there are no children
out side playing or interacting within our neighborhood.
I have struggled with the lack of reciprocal
opportunity, so that I have felt the constant
need to create play inspired events. This has
been an interesting experience because I feel
like I have met many different kinds of families,
with many different kinds of situations: economically,
socially, educationally and the common thread
that seems to run along side of the play problem
is the lack of time to put the play together.
Now I have come to the question
of tapping into the neighborhood. There are
children inside homes everywhere who would love
the chance to play with each other but do not
have the skill to put it together by themselves
or they are too young to go outside alone. So
I have explored the idea of the group Playdate
and in this case, the neighborhood playdate.
It takes initiative for
anything meaningful to happen!
After having conversations with some
of the parents that I would meet as I walked
around my neighborhood, I would hear of their
discontent with their own children's play opportunities.
As we would talk to each other we didn't quite
put it together that maybe our children would
even want to play with each other because they
might be the wrong age or the opposite gender.
But over time the situation continued to keep
children from any interaction until we put together
a Halloween Event just to have our children
have the chance to Trick-or-Treat in there own
neighborhood. Then it began to take form. The
kids loved being part of something and going
for their long walk together, laughing and excited
to share their good fortune in candy! It didn't
even matter that one child was four and a girl
and that another child was 10 and a boy, what
mattered is that they could relate to the adventure!
They were tender with each other, skipping,
running and joyously expressing themselves,
and their excitement created more excitement
and they loved it!
But Halloween came and went and then there was
nothing until spring when one mother suggested
an Easter-egg hunt. With printed invitations
in hand, I walked our three mile neighborhood
( where houses are far apart) and put invitations
into mailboxes of the houses where the children
lived. Requesting an RSVP provided an opportunity
to hear the very excited response to the event.
The parents were requested to fill 12 eggs per
attending child so that the host family was
not particularly having a party but more providing
a place for the children to come together. This
event proved to be an extraordinary success
because within seconds the children were off
running through the yard, caring for each other,
sharing eggs, helping the babies find eggs of
their own and creating teams to play games they
had invented on their own.
As all of this was happening,
it became very clear to all the parents attending
that our children didn't care what the age differences
were or that this child was a boy and that one
a girl, they just wanted to play together! We
talked about doing this again and again but
nothing happened. It was becoming clear to me
that we were falling back into our demanding
lives. I wanted this to continue, I wanted more
play opportunities to develop
and realized that nothing ever happens without
initiative.
Calling wasn't going to
do it
What became clear to me as I tried
to put into action a day when I would have the
children come to my house to play outside, was
that I was calling people on the phone to try
to get them to agree on a playday. Everyone's
schedule was different. I was wasting an enormous
amount of time. I would call, wait for a response
and then go over schedules, have cancellations
and finally, I put it together. You must create
an event, put it into an invitation and send
it out. The reason for this is that we do not
have the time to waste trying to appeal to everyone's
schedule and at the same time you need to firmly
establish what is fun, name a time and place,
provide simple snacks and then let the kids
take it from there. If the parents want their
children to participate, they will RSVP and
then they will come. In fact the families were
so excited that this play event was again going
to happen that most of these people very generously,
contributed snacks and drinks and once the parents
saw the children playing, they all marveled
at the incredible play that naturally happened
soon after the kids got together!
The Neighborhood PlayDate
is most effective if there is an Event!
Over time I began to see what made
the neighborhood PlayDate successful. It was
the invitation that provided a time-saving format
for the basic logistics of time and place, but
it was also the creation of an "Event"
that made everyone excited about something special
in the neighborhood. Now what is most important
to stress here is that the "Event"
establishes a reason for people to get together.
This does not have to be a situation where you
need to spend an enormous amount of time, money
or effort all this "event" planning
has to accomplish is the wonderful expression
of anticipation that something fun is going
to happen.
Keeping it Simple and
Exciting!
What makes an "event" exciting
is simply putting excitement into the invitation.
The invitation serves to formalize the fact
that the "Event" going to happen and
that you were invited! Now the "Event"
can be as simple as a Neighborhood Bike Ride,
or a Cookie Tasting Party or a Neighborhood
Hide and Seek. It can be designed to have everyone
contribute and participate...but it must be
firmly established as to when it will happen,
and it should promote fun and excitement.
