Parents — Keep Away and Let it Be
My daughter has started to draw her attention to keys. During our time at our local coffee shop, she took my car keys and started to notice all the buttons and shapes and sizes of all the keys on the hook. She started to feel her hands around the sides and ridges to picture how it was to fit into an opening for a car, door, or safe. At this stage, she has been exploring all shapes, sizes, and Play-Doh to become more familiar with touch.
After I thought about my daughter, and I had time in my day, I came across a thread on Reddit entitled, “Stop letting your child play with the KeyFob. Rant.”
The thread kept circling back to the security measures that must be taken if your child were to accidentally reprogram your car’s locking mechanisms. The thread went on to give examples of the manufacturer and brand of the vehicle for which the key fob was making all these mechanisms start to happen. Kids will eventually do worse things than that. It seems a child’s creative measures should be taken into consideration when the parents are not allowing free play even when it comes to reprogramming your vehicle keyfob.
Most obstacles that kids encounter will have to be without adult supervision. I understand how difficult this can be, but I have been listening to the advice of developmental psychologist Peter Gray and he encourages parents to let kids have a life encounter with friends the same age to build resilience, compassion, and grit without adult supervision. I understand we do live in a time in society where most parents are ridiculed for not taking the appropriate security measures with their kids to allow this to happen, but we can take one step back and try it.
Play builds the kind of free-and-easy, try-it-out, do-it-yourself character that our future needs.
James Hines Jr.
Let kids play in the soil and have an encounter with the earth. The way in which the environment renews and regenerates through the seasons and allows disorder to happen is the same with kids and their encounters. Plants need sunlight and nutrients to survive and grow. Plants need to be cultivated, just as children do. We, as parents, can have our kids walk around barefoot in the grass and play capture the flag on a weeknight with the neighborhood friends. It is what nature intended.
