I’m sick of these articles. Every week I open up some magazine, paper, or web site and see some adult complaining that kids have no time to “ride his bike up the street, swing at a tennis ball with a broomstick and play basketball on the blacktop” as today’s Wall Street Journal article mentions. I’ve read countless articles about how kids and teens are overscheduled, how youth sports perpetuates specializing in a sport as early as 3rd grade, and how kids just “can’t be kids anymore.” And so I ask: who is defining what being a “kid” really means? It seems that while the current 50-something has sit-on-the-dirt-and-watch-the-clouds-go-by nostalgia, today’s young people have no aspirations whatsoever to engage in such passivity. Maybe because violence and loss of life has become so prevalent in everything we do and see that the sad fact that our life can go at anytime motivates today’s “kid” to be busy and scheduled. Don’t get me wrong, I agree that there are certain parts of 21st century childhood which trouble me, but let’s stop the shaking of heads at the demise of today’s youth just because how kids spend their time today wasn’t how you spent yours.
I suspect that those who say these sort of things are more lamenting the fact that they themselves have no time to be kids anymore. Kids can find fun in pretty much whatever they’re doing.