Play room vs. back yard

[walk in the woods]

An article discussion some parents opting for indoor play rooms over large back yards when house shopping.

 

 

 

Gone are the days — for many families — when the kids head out the backdoor and play in the yard unsupervised, Blackwelder said. They probably wouldn’t want to, anyway, often preferring to play at a park (with parental supervision) or, in the case of her own family, out near the cul-de-sac in front of the house, where other neighborhood kids would gather and she could watch her kids from the front steps.

 

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/for-family-home-buyers-this-room-trumps-a-big-backyard-2016-01-19?siteid=rss&rss=1

Edited January 19, 2016 by walk in the woods

[Stosh]

Everyone needs to be sheltered from all the dangers the world has to offer.  We are a society of paranoids locked in because we locked everything out.

[Stosh]

@@walk in the woods

 

This concept has popped up over the years on the forum, but these kind of references are interesting. 

 

Here's one for you to ponder, the book is really good.  http://richardlouv.com/

[Krampus]

You cannot find a large backyard in my area. Most houses have pools too. So the reason for the play room is to avoid possible dangers of tots and pools.

 

Of course, they could do what we did and buy a house with the biggest yard we could find that did not have a pool. Took a while but we found one we liked in the school district we liked.

[Stosh]

It could be that the numbers are skewed by the fact that more people are moving to urban areas.  The traditional agricultural social structure has pretty much collapsed and moved to an agricultural business structure.  People tend to live more towards the suburban/bedroom community settings were land is at a premium. 

 

I grew up in a 6 bedroom house on a lot that took up 1/6th of a city block.  Since then I have lived in one bedroom apartments, houses of all sizes and shapes, in small towns, big cities, urban and suburban areas.  I raised 3 kids in those settings.  Now that I'm retired, I have a very small 3 bedroom house, of which only one bedroom is big enough to really be a bedroom, on 9 acres of land.  Kids are all grown, but I want my grandchildren to know what country living and woods are all about.  I have put in walking trails and fire pit in the woods.  I am an extreme exception to the modern rule of thumb on home buying today.  I have one daughter who used to live in Chicago and now has moved back to small city and wants to be "close to downtown" and another daughter that wants to homestead a farm.  I'm thinking the "close to downtown" daughter is more indicative of today's home buyers.  Both daughters have a small child each.  My rural-minded daughter is more child oriented to home buying than my urban-minded daughter.  Most young people in the housing market are not rural-minded, suburban/bedroom community, maybe, but not rural.

[qwazse]

I think our society is best described as post-modern nomadic.

Private closed-spaces (temporary relative to the lifetime of the folks living in them), two hour commutes in closed carriages, and shared open spaces.

The latter includes "downtown", local parks, community gardens, and National parks.

[Stosh]

I tend to think that there is a large and growing segment of our society that has and is being conditioned to think nature is not a good thing.  There are all the traditional boogie-man things like bears, snakes, and such, but now we can also add Lymes Disease, encephalitis, giardia, West Nile, hunta, stuff one can't see. 

 

If that doesn't scare the kajeebies out of ya, then there's the tornadoes, lightning, hurricanes, scorching heat, flash floods and frigid wind chills are ever popular, too.  Oh, did I mention the hail storms with stones the size of softballs?

 

Is it any wonder our society is paranoid of nature?  After all even if the kids get in the car before it leaves the garage, they have that one last dash from the curb to the school door where any number of terrible things can happen to our dear defenseless children.  Oh, the inhumanity!!!!  Remember if mom or dad didn't work there's always homeschooling, that's becoming popular once more.

 

And even then one must remember the horror stories their grandparents told them about when they rode in a car without seat-belts and car seats...and then there were the back roads rural hicks that actually rode in the back of the pickup!  Can you even imagine that?  Back in the day when one did venture out into the unprotected SPF-1000 to shield them from the deadly rays of the sun, actually road their bikes without helmets.  We won't even go into those daredevils that rode no-handed.  To these ancient fools, basketball was actually played outside in the driveway amidst all these horrendous dangers.   Then there were the club houses built in trees with old crappy lumber that no one wanted.  These were the idiots that ran and played on asphalt playgrounds. 

 

Is it any wonder we can't get the kids up from under the covers of their bed each morning and expect them to run the gauntlet of life with all that threatens out there!  Sounds like child abuse to me!  Call a lawyer now, before it's too late.

[Krampus]

Went camping this past weekend. Temps in the 20s and teens. PLC gave the scouts more than enough info to be prepared (e.g., layers, handwarmers, right gear, change clothes, warming hut, camp fires, etc.).

 

Had to shut off the 45,000 BTU heater the adults brought more than once. Had two adults want to leave because it was getting "too cold".  It's January...in west Texas. Did we expect St. Maarten?

 

I'm that "bad guy" that forces adults to live under the same conditions as the boys. Sue me.   

[Stosh]

We were in a heated "cabin" at the council camp this past weekend.  Hosting Webelos II boys.  It was -10^o with wind chills dropping to -35^o.  One of my boys got a major lesson in frostbite after a half hour of sledding. He got his hand wet and then put his glove back on.  Not smart. Very painful to treat, but no long-term damage.

 

I've experienced camping in this kind of weather so I know the Webelos boys wouldn't do well. 

 

Wudda loved the teens and 20's of West Texas!  No can do in Wisconsin, but this weekend it'll be in the 20's so we would have done a lot better.  Downright balmy.

[Krampus]

 

Wudda loved the teens and 20's of West Texas!  No can do in Wisconsin, but this weekend it'll be in the 20's so we would have done a lot better.  Downright balmy.

 

The irony was the guy who had the biggest issue with the cold temps was the one from the Great White North. Go figure.

[Stosh]

Hey, now! careful!  Them dam'Yankee snowbirds head south to get warm.  By the weekend, Wisconsin is going to be back in the 20's and low 30's.  They expect you Texans to come up with something better than that! 

[Fehler]

I find it hilarious that the people musing about paranoid behavior in parents won't bring their scouts to the mall without being fully armed.

[Stosh]

Yep, I'm paranoid some elderly gentleman might have a heart attack at the mall so I keep my CPR certification up-to-date, too.  Be prepared.

[cyclops]

We routinely let our grandsons (age 4 and 6) run 'wild' in the 10 acres or so of forest behind our home. They enjoy trying to push over dead trees and dig through rotten logs to try to find all kinds of insects. The terrain is very steep and once in a while they topple over and roll a ways. Then that turns into 'sport' and they eventually return covered with dirt and leaves and ravenously hungry.

We have no concerns whatsoever about their safety, short of brier scratches or perhaps a bruise or two. They are loud and active and any self-respecting wildlife will avoid them like the plague.

I'm looking forward to the day they're old enough to turn loose on the 20,000 acres of forest just across the road near the lake.