Child's Play: Rediscovering the Joy of Play in Our Families and Communities

The Dream Not long ago, on a damp, fall evening, my children, Kate and William, and I were taking our thirteen-year-old golden retriever, Banner, on a quick lap around the block before dinner. As I neared the dead-end road by my neighbourhood park, I heard the distinctive thwack of a hockey stick on asphalt. Slam went the stick, whack went the ballthe sound was rhythmic and constant as my young neighbour Mark slapped his bright orange hockey puck into the net over and over again. A car came up behind us, and Mark glided over to pick up the net so the car could pass. He moved the net effortlessly back again and resumed his play, oblivious to my watching eyes. Hearing that sound of stick on pavement transported me back to the noisy streets of my childhood. On the roads I grew up on, there was always a group of kids playing street shinny and screaming, "Pass, pass, pass!" Unlike many other Canadians I've met, hockey wasn't my passion I loved capture-the-flag. In my neighbourhood we played this game almost obsessively. The objective, as the name implies, was to capture the other team's marker "flag." But if you were caught on the other team's territory, you were "frozen" and had to wait to be rescued by one of your teammates. I would call, "I'm frozen, I'm frozen!" at the top of my lungs, hand stretched out, craning and leaning until someone on my team managed to sprint across enemy lines to release me. We would play non-stop until a parent finally shouted, "Dinner!" Kids used to live outside. Adventure was a central part of most days, found in the form of a scavenger hunt down a path near home, a trip to the neighbourhood Mac's Milk, a meeting of friends on the first snowy day to sneak our toboggans onto the exhilaratingly steep slopes of the Mississauga golf course. I must have been staring at Mark for a while, lost in thought, because he eventually looked up at me curiously. I smiled and move on. The streets my children and I walk resemble the ones I grew up on snug houses, big old trees and tons of space for adventures but there is one critical difference: the streets today are silent. Mark was the only kid I saw that evening. The playground we dodged through was empty, and so were the schoolyard and all the driveways we passed. And it was so quiet; there was a notable absence of boisterous shouting and gleeful laughter. I miss these children who make too much noise, whose fluorescent orange hockey balls get too close to my car window. I miss their energy, their smiles, and I miss the community these kids help create. I remember the neighbourhoods of my childhood and can't help but compare them to my neighbourhood now. Those streets and parks and play spaces were ours. Children have disappeared from our streets, seemingly overnight. Some are inside their homes, where television, the computer and video games entertain them for hours on end. Others stay in after-school care until their busy parents return from work, or are shuttled to prearranged lessons. In a busy world, where parents are under an almost unbearable pressure to balance work, family and their own health, quality family time is often snatched in the minivan on the way to hockey practice, or in the few moments before bedtime. Even a decade ago, kids still played in the parks and streets of their community after school. They met with friends and learned to skip in the driveways; their mom or dad might have come outside for a quick game of soccer or basketball. While the kids played, parents grabbed a piece of sanity and that necessary Laumann, Silken is the author of 'Child's Play: Rediscovering the Joy of Play in Our Families and Communities', published 2006 under ISBN 9780679314066 and ISBN 0679314067.