by Sarah Carmichael
When I was a kid, I played outside. Rain or shine, I was outside with my brother, my friends, or quietly swinging alone in the park. I walked out the door and found something to do. I played in the woods. I picked up snakes and worms and toads and grubs. I climbed trees and up onto big boulders. I was active and my play was unstructured. I created it.
At five, I walked to Kindergarten with my big brother and the other neighbourhood kids. The older kids looked out for the younger ones. I had two recesses and a lunch hour, all of which were spent outside. In the playground, I ran around with my friends, climbed the monkey bars, and enjoyed the rise and fall of the teeter-totter. In the winter, we’d jump on a crazy carpet and slide down the hill behind the portables.
I had an active childhood full of opportunities for informal outdoor play – at my school and in all the communities in which I lived. Aside from the boundaries my parents set, the only real barriers to my play were traffic and natural elements.
I want that for my kids. I want to open the door and say “Go! Play!” I want them to have the opportunities I enjoyed. I know they are growing up in a different time and a different place, but I want them to play. Outside. I want them to discover the world around them and assess the risk within it.
It’s not as easy to do that these days because there are a host of barriers in place, including bylaws prohibiting street hockey, and mega schools that require long bus rides.
Recently, The Heart and Stroke Foundation launched their Healthy Candidates campaign, which asks candidates in this Ontario election to commit to investing in better health. The campaign, which focuses on Childhood Obesity and Tobacco Control, makes a number of policy recommendations that hit close to home.
Healthy Candidates addresses the issues of mixed land use, bylaws restricting informal play, access to safe active transportation, and opportunities for physical activity in schools. Let’s raise a generation of active kids and give them the opportunity to choose health.
Challenge the candidates in your riding to “Go Healthy” by visiting healthycandidates.ca. There, you can also find the policy recommendations for food and tobacco control. Find Healthy Candidates on Facebook and Twitter.
Sarah Carmichael is a mother of a three year old and a four month old. She works as a consultant and is currently working on The Heart and Stroke Foundation’s Healthy Candidate social media campaign. She also blogs at sarahcasm.ca
2 Comments
Great Post Sarah! This comes as we are sitting down to lunch after spending 2 hours at the playground!
I agree we have to get our kids outside to play. There needs to be places safe for them to play, but yet gives them a lot of choice as to how to play.
We played outside all the time as kids as well & walked to school in kindergarten on our own (or so we thought – mom followed us!). But we were out we were active.
My commitment to my kids is to get outside with them (even when I don’t want to) until they are old enough to be able to say “outside, go play”. I’m looking forward to that even if in the beginning it is just in the backyard.
I so believe in this, I’m always telling my daughter to head outside and play. The big problem between her doing this and when I did it, is that there aren’t any kids playing outside. We don’t have many children on our street (even that we are within seconds of the school).