Did you know that amount of time children and teens spend on the computer has tripled in the last 10 years?
This actually comes as no surprise to me as the internet has become ubiquitous and is available to most children whether it’s in school, home or the local library.
So, like Baroness Susan Greenfield asked in a recent article:
Are [children] at risk of losing [their] imagination, that mysterious and special cognitive gift that until now has always made the book so much better than the film?
What a sad state of affairs it would be for children to become mindless droids, just looking up anything they may have a question about on Google or Wikipedia, then taking that as fact without actually experiencing what it is to research, understand and learn.
Do kids still have the skills to go out and discover for themselves through trial and error and in this cotton wool society, are they even allowed to by over protecting parents and a nanny state?
As little as 20 years ago, it was common place for kids to be out playing in the streets enjoying themselves, sometimes getting into sticky situations and even, yes, falling over and hurting themselves.
But it seems more and more children are allowed to just while away their time in front of a screen, whether it's the TV or a computer.
But what we seem to be forgetting is that humans and children in particular are incredibly resilient. But that resilience, although inherent in every child, must be nurtured and encouraged.
This is just like the ability to make mistakes, discover new things and solve problems which are becoming less and less with the advent of the all powerful, all knowing internet.
So, why can't we let our children out to play like they used to and why are they spending so much time indoors in front of the computer?
One reason is that there are now incredibly sophisticated computer games that can have kids hooked from as young as 6 years or sometimes younger, it’s a worrying situation we are in, which parents are letting their kids play.
This has been attributed to parents working longer hours and not having time to play with their children but even so, there's just more to do inside now.
So, is there any hope for our over fed, under-thinking, over pampered kids?
Well, of course, and despite these statistics, they certainly don’t tell the whole story.
There are of course many wonderful children that still play outside and are allowed to make mistakes and grow up naturally. And this is partly why I have created the Wooden Toy Gallery, because it allows children to be children, to discover, explore, be boisterous, challenge themselves and enjoy nature in all it’s glorious beauty.
I mean, childrens wooden toys can have a profound affect on children and I recently read this wonderful comment in a blog post which asked if children still played with wooden toys:
Little girl, Real people stock photo by www.pixmac.com
I use my scrap cut-offs to make wooden cars, trains, trucks, etc. for my small grandchildren. They loved them! They loved them so much I tried an experiment and just made different shaped and sized pieces from the scrap, not even fashioning them into anything recognizable. Same reaction - delight! Kids will use their imaginations to turn anything into something that amuses, challenges and intrigues them.
What a wonderful experience to read about. Just imagine how incredible it would be to get that reaction from your kids every time you bought them something new!
It’s an exciting world that we live in with more possibilities and opportunities for our children then ever before but what we must be careful of is overexposing them to the wrong things that stifle their natural creative abilities and actually let them be at one with nature and discover things for themselves.
What a wonder that would be.
