A Safe Place To Play

Somewhere in white bread America there is a father or grandfather sitting in his oversized, well decorated upper-class suburban home and wondering to himself why it is that inner city children are so much different that his own. He doesn’t understand why so many appear unmotivated, undisciplined, angry, sad, or end up running afoul of the law. He might be blaming a lack of parental oversight, the teachers, the poverty, the Democrats, the predominance of hip-hop culture among inner city communities, and even the children themselves. I don’t blame him for his misdiagnosis of the problem, because our great white grandfather has never peered beyond his carefully manicured front lawn long enough to get a clear picture of someone else’s reality.

I live in the city. During the spring and summer months, and sometimes into the autumn, I drive as little as possible, often making the 35 mile round trip back and forth from work on bicycle. I can take Outer Drive, which runs ‘as the crow flies’ from my front door to within two miles of my office, which is on the southern edge of the suburbs. When you travel by bicycle or on foot, your power of observation tends to increase exponentially simply because you’re moving slower and have more time to watch what’s going on around you. In my daily commute, which takes me right across the city, and not even through the worst parts of it, I bear a daily witness to those profound differences between suburban and city environments that the great white grandfather wouldn’t ever be able to spot from the window of his private jet, even if he bothered to look.

So you might be wondering at this point what brought on this particular ranting.

Typically, if there is a gathering of friends, relatives, or close family, I, being the childless ‘uncle’ and all-around fun guy to play with, am delegated the responsibility of chaperoning the various nieces, nephews, and children of friends to a local park to give mommy, daddy, and everyone else some quiet time away from the kids. This is a lot of fun for me as well, and I have no complaints about assuming this awesome responsibility. It was on one these recent expeditions, screaming and laughing kids in tow, that the realization hit me hard enough to make me cry. It’s not that I hadn’t noticed it before, but for some reason, the effect of this knowledge had not touched me so deeply until now.

The Sunday afternoon romp in the upper-class suburban park was something of a surreal experience for one accustomed to seeing cracked pavement, piles of dog excrement, discarded beer cans, and broken glass along the sides of the streets and parks that I pass on my way to and from work each day. There was none of the above-mentioned garbage anywhere to be found. Of the several play stations and jungle gyms available, there were no swings missing, no rusted slides, no bars bent out of shape, and plenty of new safety features to protect children from serious injury. There was something else this park had that the other s didn’t; there were children already there, laughing and running carefree. There were parents overseeing the reverie, but there was no sense of fear, or reluctance on anyone’s part to do anything other than have a good time. There was no worry over drug deals, bullies, thugs, prostitutes, or the child finding a used needle or broken bottle in the grass. There were the usual parental concerns of ‘don’t get too far ahead’ and ‘keep an eye on your sister’, but that was where the warnings ceased.

The primary and foremost factor in determining the developmental success or failure of a child is, in my opinion, a two-fold sense of safety and freedom. One cannot underestimate the power of feeling safe to play, to run, to think, or to grow. I remember running across open fields without a care in the world and the joy that brought me. Think about what effects the opposite must do to a child’s psyche, to know from early on that the world is unsafe, unclean, and unsuitable for the very things that define the meaning of childhood. The child can see the swing-set from his or her window, but it has no swings left on it, or swings that can’t be used for fear of what may be lurking behind them. A child remains locked in his or her home, glued to a computer game or television, because the playground, the place that makes a child a healthy risk-taking and imaginative child, is no longer playable.

I don’t know who is to blame for the degradation of city playgrounds and parks. Maybe I will find myself in agreement with the great white grandfather on some issues. Is it Vandalism? The lack of funding? Apathy? Crime? Poverty? All of the above? Perhaps. Yet, the fact remains that we have a serious problem with a simple solution. We can waste all the time we want later on prosecuting the guilty and forming the proper lynch mobs, but every minute we squander in not fixing the problem means that another day goes by where a child somewhere doesn’t have the simple freedom to play on the swings or see-saw. It becomes another day where the child’s ‘conversation’ about the world revolves around safety, when it should be carefree and open to new experience and ideas.

Lets give all our children somewhere safe to play.