Why has childhood become such a regimented grind?

I AM not a fan of homework for young children. As a child I remember thinking how unfair it was that the children of farmers had to do ‘lessons’ when the teacher knew well we also had farm work to do. No matter how you tried to avoid it you had to change out of your good clothes and head for the yard as soon as you had eaten your dinner. At that time dinner was eaten as close to the middle of the day as possible.

We all had our ‘jobs’ and we had ‘lessons’ to do but somehow, we always had time to play. We played cowboys and Indians, we played at shop, we played at farming, we built ‘cubby houses’ decorating them with tins, jam jars, biscuit boxes and empty containers of all kinds.

As we got older we got braver and went fishing for ‘bricíns’ in the stream and as our limbs stretched we began to wander further from home becoming explorers, climbing the stone stairs and crumbling walls of the castles and ruins that dotted our local landscape. We went swimming in the local lakes, even though the nearest lifeguard to us was probably on Bondi Beach.

Remembering childhood can result in an idyll of the mind as one re-imagines a past that is far more rosy in the recall than it was in reality. Nevertheless, my abiding memory of my childhood is one where we had time, time we could call our own. However, my sense of my own children’s lives is that they have little time that’s truly their own.

As the parents and adults of this generation we have allowed our children’s time to be structured out of existence, we have colluded in allowing them to be smothered under heaps of homework and hours of organised activities.

Every day, as soon as the homework is done, or indeed while it is still being done, we are on the road driving them to dancing or sports or gymnastics or music and myriad activities we consider to be ‘good for them’.

My siblings and I had our dinner at the kitchen table but my children often ate their dinners on their laps in the back seat of the car as we sped along to meet the next deadline.

Social skills

I was recently introduced to the work of Dr Peter Gray, a research professor of psychology at Boston College and a great champion of ‘child’s play’. By play he doesn’t mean organised sports, organised theatrics or music or dance classes, he’s talking about free play.

He defines play as self-chosen and self-directed, intrinsically motivated, guided by mental concepts and imaginative. He points out that all young mammals play and in so doing practice the skills to survive and thrive.

Some of the key lessons learned in play are social skills, how to co-operate, how to organise, how to read body language, how to argue your case, how to win and how to surrender with grace.

He claims that since the 1950s play among children has declined. He attributes the decline to three things; a rise in fear, fear of the other, fear of everyone outside the family circle, fear of accident. He also points the finger at the increasing incursion of school and homework into the lives of children. I have two exam students in the house at the moment they are dropped at school every morning at 8.50 and often their day doesn’t finish until at least 8.30pm.

The professor finally blames an increase in a ‘schoolish’ view of child development as responsible for the regimentation of play putting children into team sports complete with uniforms and imposed rules.

Dr Gray claims the linear decline in play from the 1950s has a corresponding and correlating rise in anxiety disorders, depression and suicides among young people. He says that a world without play is depressing and anxiety-provoking.

He quotes research undertaken by anthropologists who studied children’s lives in hunter/gatherer tribal communi-