A Little Free-Range Moment at Recess

Wow! I worked as an aide at an elementary school for 5 years and spent a lot of time on the playground watching grades K-5 play soccer. I would have loved it if they had told me they could play soccer on their own.

But no, they were always complaining because they got hit by the ball or got kicked on the shin (like that’s not going to happen in soccer?), or someone wouldn’t pass to them, and so on. If they had an interpersonal issue they hated me because I would tell them to either deal with it and work it out, or stay away from each other on the field. They really wanted me to blame and punish the other person, but from what I could see they always both contributed to the problem.

I am so happy that these Ontario kids can play on their own!!!

Nanci, I love your daughter’s imagination.

I personally hated kickball. I think there generally was a game going on, perhaps run by a teacher, but I always avoided them and played my own games with like minded friends.

Wonderful! Kids are certainly capable when given the chance. I know there are a lot of kids who wouldn’t do this, though. I always wonder if it’s a result of all the organized sports teams starting as preschoolers. They never learn to just pick up a ball, gather some friends and play a game. They feel they have to be led by an adult. I noticed the article said this was a low income area. Perhaps most of these kids couldn’t afford organized teams and consequently have learned to play on their own. We don’t do organized sports teams as a matter of principle for our young kids (our oldest is 10), but encourage them to grab a ball, rally some neighborhood kids, and just play. It is a challenge! Not for our kids, but for the neighborhood kids. Some of the responses they’ve gotten is, “Oh, I play soccer on Tuesday and Thursday nights and Saturday morning.” “Who’s going to be the coach?” “Who decides if someone breaks the rules?” Not to mention for a while we’d have kids running inside tattling every 5 minutes, wanting me to make a judgement call. Of course I would refuse to and sometimes little players would stomp home pouting. Over time they have found a few kids that will join in and they have relaxed over time and admit they enjoy these impromptu games much more than their organized games. It definitely confirmed my gut instinct to stay away from these adult led teams while they were little. Now as they get older, they will be most welcome to join team sports if they are interested. Right now they are busy and having fun bringing “sandlot” sports back to our neighborhood. 🙂

I don’t recall having recess as a kid (we lived in a low-income area, too) but we used to play sandlot style football and stickball. Right across from my house was an empty lot (from an old store that burnt down when I was a baby). It was usually overgrown but once in awhile someone would come cut the grass and weeds down and we’d all go over there and play ball with whatever we could find. Sometimes someone would have a bat, sometimes it was a real stick from one of the trees or it was an old broom. The balls could be anything (baseball, softball, racquetball, even a basketball (mini one) ).

We even once played with a beach ball and a tennis racket and created our own hilarious short game (it was fast since the ball wouldn’t go very far). Everyone in the neighborhood knew the rules for these games and people would come and go as they could play. Other kids would sit on the old side steps of the building and watch or climb in the trees and hang out.

It was a risky choice because there was a lot of broken glass around and eventually got so bad we couldn’t use the lot any more so we’d play in the street or in the parking lot of the school across the street. When we moved when I was 12 me and my brought these pick up games with us and taught our new friends and we’d play in the parking lot of the church across the street (never even broke a window). We used to play football and basketball, too. I think we even invented something like broom hockey.

My kids… they don’t seem to have the same initiative to make up these games. They just sit around and complain their bored and that making up games is too hard. Sigh. They don’t even know how to play Red Rover or Mother May I (I think they learned Red Light, Green Light at school). Those were games me and my friends played all the time. My son and his friends are about the only one that play sports on their own. Football pick up games pop up at the park all the time and it’s kids from high school down to 2nd or 3rd grade. My son was in 3rd the first time one of the older kids invited him to play. He came home a few times crying the kids were “mean” to him (as in didn’t let him score or didn’t throw to him) but I always told him to get over it and he eventually went back to play and rarely comes home to complain any more (he’s now in 5th).

They did invent “zombie tag” that them and their friends played after school all the time for awhile. I have no idea what they do at recess since they don’t have any space for soccer. They have a little playground and then the pack part of the parking lot. All the grassy area around their school are ball fields for the high school and are all fenced off.

Off-topic, but Lenore, I thought you might appreciate this columnist’s take on the recent disappearance of a 10-year-old in Colorado:

http://www.chicagonow.com/tween-us/2012/10/jessica-ridgeways-disappearance-will-impact-how-my-tween-gets-to-elementary-school/

This weekend my 8 year old daughter had a bunch of friends over. I went to buy them Pizza and left them outside playnig. My mom lives in the next apartment but felt no need to have her hover over them while I was gone. I was pleasantly suprised when I came back and my parking area had been transformed into a netball court (similar to basketball but no dribbling allowed). They had taken sidewalk chalk and made the actually court and they used a hula hoop hanging from our high wall and the trees to make the net/basket. They had a blast. every time the net fell one of them had to climb the wall to fix it. It was hilarious. I told them I loved their creativity and revelled in the fact that they did it all alone and beat this, they played a sport on concrete barefoot or in flip flops too. 🙂

In response to Brian: not sure how this is handled on school grounds, other than that teachers will intervene if egregious bullying or exclusion is going on. That’s legitimate reason for an adult to intervene. But away from school (and I spent my entire childhood playing pick-up games of baseball, touch football, and basketball), everyone is included because more players gets you closer to what a “real” game would look like. You might not feel totally friendly towards a kid, but you need her/him. If bullying had occurred we would either have all gone home until the bully went away, or we would have told the bully that bullying was against our rules.

My daughters fourth and fifth grade recess class has decided to organize a gymnastics club. The more advanced kids are teaching the ones (like my daughter) who aren’t as skilled. One of the rules is don’t do anything unless someone is watching. A boy already had a broken arm by falling on the pavement he wasn’t doing gymnastics or anything more athletic than walking.

Fortunately no one has stopped them from doing the club. A couple of the kids practice after school. My daugher (goes to day care) and they let them mix with the non day care kids on school grounds as long as everyone behaves and no one grumbles when it is time for the day care kids to go in and start their homework or play inside. They have about an hour outside and I can definitely tell when she has had a chance to blow off steam. They will use the gym (that will be day care kids) only once it is too cold to go outside.

@C.J.–It probably worked well enough, because SportAbility (the actual name of the company; I made a mistake earlier) is an American company, and their schools are either K-6, or grades 1-6, so for at least some schools, six colours of balls would have been enough.

@Sharon–The gymnastics club sounds like an awesome idea. Good on your daughter’s friends for starting it, and good on the school and the day care for allowing it.

Brian- I wasn’t suggesting that teachers are not supervising the students during recess. We always have teachers on yard duty but there are some teachers who choose to run activities at lunch recess that students can sign up for. My students just didn’t feel the need to sign up for an activity organized by an adult and would rather do their own thing. While my students play their games, there are teachers on the yard to help students who require it but these teachers are not putting the kids onto teams or keeping score. By having teachers on yard duty, you don’t erase bullying, teasing or excluding others but you do have an adult there so that if a student has a problem, there is someone there to help. My students have had SNAP (Stop Now, And Plan) training so they have the added benefit of having some tools to help them resolve the issues that arise on the school yard.

Hey, while we’re on the subject of made-up games, who here has read Calvin and Hobbes? In those stories, Calvin invents a game called “Calvinball,” which just involves making up the rules as you go along. Also, Calvin and his tiger friend Hobbes (who Calvin sees as a real, anthropomorphized tiger, and adults just see as a stuffed tiger) spend a lot of time playing in the forest, tobogganing, building snowmen, etc., and his parents, his teacher, and the various other adults only have bit parts–in fact, his parents don’t even have names other than “Mom” and “Dad.” Anyway, my point is, Calvin seems to be the ideal model of a free-range kid, and if people treated the Calvin and Hobbes books of cartoon strips as parenting advice, they probably wouldn’t do too badly.