Bangarang!

I recently discovered an article posted on another dad blog about the loss of adventure for kids these days. I can do my best to suspend nostalgia, and still imagine days and evenings overflowing with adventure when I was a kid. The woods across the street from my neighborhood, the clearing behind Nathan’s house, even the 50 foot long dirt bike-path that I took as a short cut to school.
This great article points out the extreme choke-hold parents put on their kids’ imaginations because of irrational fear of abduction or some other monster. Did you know that no more kids are abducted today than were abducted 50 years ago? It’s about 115 kids a year. Terrible, I know, but I think because of the availability of information these days (we have 24 hour news channels that have to find something to talk about), parents are tempted, or even forced by fear, into cutting their kids off from the mysteries and adventures that have filled suburban childhoods since suburbia first showed up.

The obvious dad tip is to let your kids play. The trick will be finding a balance between dad’s theory (“What are the odds that anything will happen”), and your wife’s theory (Our child is going to get kidnapped tomorrow”). I guess the best thing you could do is move next to some kind of protected public land somewhere; or just near an acre of trees even.