Free-range kids Would you unshackle yours from afterschool clubs?
The daily grind of extracurricular clubs hems in nature-loving creativity, claims Lauren Libbert
As the cleaners gather the empty crisp packets and the teachers head to their after-school meetings, here we are, in the playground, always the last ones to leave. My boys may be kicking a football about, having a quick game of table tennis or running up the empty slide on the climbing frame. All the other children have gone, most of them rushed off in a sea of guitar cases and swimming bags to cries of “Quick, we’re going to be late” from parents frantically checking watches as they chivvy their charges towards their next structured activity. Instead, we loiter, eventually leaving the playground when the caretaker not so subtly clangs his keys.
“Where to now?” I say in the car, the dog, having waited patiently for us to return, now licking the boys’ faces clean. “To the park, lido, home?” More often than not, thanks to the dog’s whining, we end up in the park, where anything can – and does – happen. Impromptu football games with local kids; a stab at scaling a tree; or an attempt to perfect handstands in the long, damp grass.
Some afternoons we head to the nearby lido for a dip in its icy waters or travel to London’s Hampstead Heath where the boys will spend an hour trying to coax our water-shy dog into the ponds to swim, and often end up in there themselves, fully clothed, splashing about, happy, while the dog watches from the bank, bemused.
This is the magic that happens when you unshackle your children from the daily grind of after-school activities. Guitar, drama, dance, Cubs, tennis, swimming, woodwork – my boys, aged nine and 10, do none of them.
It was a decision I took two school terms ago, fed up with dragging them to various activities they seemed less than enthusiastic about, only to have a short window of time to then squeeze in dinner, homework, bath and bed.
When I double-checked with my youngest last week that he didn’t want to start after-school guitar lessons this September, he said: “No, I just want to go out and play.” Fair enough. Isn’t it OK to just, well… let them be? That’s
how I grew up in the Seventies, my after-school activity involving little more than making up a dance routine on a stretch of wall in a nearby street until something told me – perhaps the strong whiff of my mother’s cauliflower cheese – that it was time for tea.
At first, it was a shock to all of us. The other school mums eyed me curiously when I told them we’d decided to ditch after-school activities.
And it was, admittedly, unnerving. What if my decision to pull the plug on their extra-curricular activities meant my sons would enter the world unskilled, never to perfect their backhand, swim 50m unaided or reach their potential as musicians or cabinetmakers? But then I saw their shoulders broaden and their confidence grow. Come drizzle or sun, the outdoors seemed to teach so many valuable lessons.
Playing football with local kids of all ages and backgrounds made them sociable, street smart and canny. Climbing trees made them believe in their own physical strength and will.
They became nature-savvy, learning how a simple tap from a stick could make a parakeet fly from its hole in a tree, that crows can intimidate dogs, that bees love nothing more than an open stem of fuchsia. When the sun finally came out, I watched their bodies turn nut-brown and sinewy. Open spaces became their friends.
They screamed, somersaulted, leapt. They weren’t hemmed into a classroom. They were free.
A recent National Trust report noted how, in the space of one generation, the proportion of children regularly playing in wild places in the UK has fallen from more than half to fewer than one in 10, with children suffering from “nature deficit disorder”. Experts suggest this is partly due to the rise in the structuring of children’s time.
Take kids away from nature and keep them inside and it may lead to a rise in obesity, rickets, asthma and a decline in cardio-respiratory fitness. But aside from the physical benefits, letting children have unstructured free time rather than forcing them to study or cultivate a skill allows for more creativity. Soon, the summer will be over, the days will be short again and the park will have less appeal. But maybe that’s when I build the treehouse in the garden. Scrub that. I won’t build it – my boys will.