Couple of new articles about kids, nature, and "safety"

[conuly]

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6929/

http://exploreportlandnature.wordpress.com/2012/07/29/in-which-i-ask-why-even-go-outside/

Typing is still awkward, but I'm improving on this arrangement. Keyboard goes ABOVE iPad. Sheesh.

Comments

Appalling.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

I knew there were people like that in the world, but I didn't know they had successfully infiltrated so far.

I grew up on five acres. With trees. We have no poison ivy, nettles or poisonous snakes on the property.

I and the kid next door (until they moved away) went barefoot, climbed trees, made "swords" out of sticks with a crossed quillion and had swordfights, made bows & arrows ditto (driving my mother up a tree by experimenting with knapped glass arrowheads), dug holes to see what moles did, built "forts" in the tall grass, cracked rocks open with other rocks to see what was inside, rode our bikes miles down the road without helmets/pads and did tricks & stunts (and fell off occasionally), picked and ate various wild foodstuffs, had snowball fights during the rare snowfalls, played in (and occasionally fell in) the crick out in the back pasture, and drank out of the hose.

I never fell out of a tree, never broke a bone, never ate anything poisonous or even bellyache-inducing. (I seem to be immune to green apples.) I did cut my knee wide open when I was six crawling under a barbwire fence, but I got a bandaid rather than stitches and learned to step through instead of crawling under. (The scar is still an inch long, it was impressive when I was six.)

Fortunately, the kids I know of related to myself aren't growing up wrapped in tissue paper.

A cautionary study

[old-cutter-john.livejournal.com]

Take a look at this (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201207/all-work-and-no-play-make-the-baining-the-dullest-culture-earth).

[sayga.livejournal.com]

Wow, that was a fascinating read! I thought this was incredible: "They consider adoption to be the ideal form of parenting, because to raise someone else’s child is less natural than to raise one's own. At the time that Fajans studied them, 36% of the children were adopted. In Baining tradition, if someone asks to adopt your child it is not polite to refuse their request."

I can barely comprehend that. I wonder if it happens often that someone asks to adopt your child. I wonder if it would be permissable or desireable for 2 couples to agree ahead of time to have children and then swap.

[sayga.livejournal.com]

The one about Portland was especially cool. We love to take our kids to Tryon State Park, and we live right by the Southwest Community center. It's interesting to hear about that kind of thing, but I haven't witnessed it in Portland.

Kira's school has an EcoThink club, and they go into the woods and do experiements and interact with nature. One was testing the pH of streams vs a stagnant pond. Another was identifying invasive weeds and talking about how invasive plant species can be stopped (and the kids had their shoes dusted/brushed off before entering the wildlife area, to prevent spread of invasive species through seeds on shoes). I imagine that was more structured, but whatever they did (I wasn't present at the club meetings), the kids learned and were really excited to talk about how cool it was. I find that most people in Portland LOVE to interact with nature.

Tucson was very different. As much as I love and miss Tucson, people were always SHOCKED that we would go hiking, make staffs out of sagurao spines, look for scorpions, catch horny toads, or even just walk to the grocery store. I didn't meet a lot of people who did that stuff.