Aba A Luke

When was the last time you saw a group of young boys pitch­ing mar­bles or play­ing with sling shots and pop guns? It's very rare to see lit­tle girls play­ing hand games, moral and hop­scotch these days, isn't it?

It seems as though to­day the games played are con­fined to small liv­ing spaces where the tele­vi­sion is cen­tre stage. Video games have tak­en over, and so has the com­put­er, but in a bid to ra­tio­nalise the sit­u­a­tion, it must be ex­am­ined whether the new gam­ing trend can sole­ly be blamed on tech­no­log­i­cal de­vel­op­ment. We have to ques­tion whether we, as hu­man be­ings-lead­ers, moth­ers, fa­thers and el­der sib­lings have con­tributed to the ex­tinc­tion of out­door play among the younger gen­er­a­tion.

Play­ing the blame game

Tech­nol­o­gy and its ad­vance­ment have been blamed time and time again for many of the world's cur­rent is­sues. From gun vi­o­lence to rape, mur­der and an­ti-so­cial be­hav­iour, the tele­vi­sion, ca­ble, mu­sic videos, video games and the In­ter­net have been charged with ex­pos­ing the world's youth pop­u­la­tion to an­ar­chy and neg­a­tiv­i­ty. The ques­tion is, though, did we ever stop to look at whether we, as hu­man be­ings al­lowed tech­nol­o­gy to be­come the au­thor­i­ties in our young peo­ple's lives?

Times have cer­tain­ly changed. We're no longer in the 60's or 70's when moth­ers would stay at home and take care of their chil­dren, en­sure meals were home-cooked and clothes for school were ironed for the week on Sun­days. In­stead, we live in a so­ci­ety where moth­ers are forced to be bread­win­ners and fa­thers are more of­ten that not, deemed, dead beat dads.

We live in a world that is be­com­ing over-pop­u­lat­ed. Where there was once the op­tion of re­sid­ing in a quaint com­mu­ni­ty where trees, shrubs and bush­es could be seen in abun­dance, tall apart­ment build­ings and gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties now dom­i­nate. With this change and signs of much more de­vel­op­ment to come, it's al­most safe to say that the "old time" child's play will nev­er come back.

The voice of a moth­er

Joanne Joseph is the sin­gle moth­er of two boys. She rents at an apart­ment build­ing and works at Carib Brew­ery in the mer­chan­dis­ing de­part­ment. Joanne agrees that chil­dren to­day are at a dis­ad­van­tage as a re­sult of the lack of time par­ents have to spend with them. She is al­so con­cerned about the Gov­ern­ment's ap­par­ent lack of thought when it comes to the de­sign of many of the mod­ern gov­ern­ment hous­ing struc­tures be­ing con­struct­ed. "It is tough when a sin­gle moth­er comes home from work and she has to sit and do home­work with the chil­dren, and take care of the house and pre­pare for school and work the next day. Life has be­come tire­some," she ac­knowl­edged, lament­ing that the fam­i­ly now left the home ear­ly in the morn­ing and didn't re­turn be­fore sun down.

This, she said, was one of the rea­sons chil­dren have ca­reened down a path where it seemed as though Game­boys and Nin­ten­do Wii games were their babysit­ters. A lack of help from fa­thers is an­oth­er is­sue of con­cern to the striv­ing moth­er. She high­light­ed that many fa­thers lacked the will­ing­ness to spend time play­ing out­doors with their chil­dren. "Long time fa­thers would take their boys to fish and do out­door sports, but nowa­days, the mag­is­trate has to sum­mon some fa­thers to spend time with their chil­dren. They'd much pre­fer to lime and do the things they en­joy," she mused.

She hopes that in the near fu­ture, the HDC and oth­er hous­ing con­trac­tors in this coun­try, would see the im­por­tance of in­stalling out­door ac­tiv­i­ty ar­eas for chil­dren from tod­dler to teenag­er. "There should be jun­gle gyms and swings and fruit trees on these com­pounds. They are build­ing these hous­ing com­plex­es with adults in mind so chil­dren are be­com­ing adults be­fore time," she as­sert­ed. With her chil­dren's well-be­ing a pri­or­i­ty, Joanne said if she could change one thing about her cur­rent lifestyle for the ben­e­fit of her boys, it would be their habi­ta­tion plan. "I would love for my chil­dren to be able to play out­doors, climb trees and play foot­ball. We live in an apart­ment build­ing so there's nowhere for them to do that at home."

An ed­u­ca­tor's per­spec­tive

Ma­li­na LaFou­cade is a re­tired pri­ma­ry school teacher, who has con­tin­ued to vol­un­teer at the La Pas­to­ra Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School in San­ta Cruz. She said that even at school play was down­played. "Some teach­ers com­plain that the chil­dren come back to class too dirty with shirt but­tons miss­ing and all that, so they try to de­ter them from play­ing with mar­bles," she ex­plained. Out­side of school, how­ev­er, LaFou­cade said par­ents nowa­days sim­ply didn't have enough time. Re­flect­ing on the past, LaFou­cade said, "We have to go back to the days when the com­mu­ni­ty raised a child, but even that nowa­days is tough be­cause peo­ple's at­ti­tudes have to change," she said. The ed­u­ca­tor sad­ly not­ed that no mat­ter what so­lu­tions came up, one thing spi­raled in­to an­oth­er, with safe­ty be­ing a big is­sue. "You have to be care­ful who you leave your chil­dren with now, with so much go­ing on in so­ci­ety." Nev­er­the­less, she agreed that out­door play was es­sen­tial in the de­vel­op­ment of young chil­dren.

For more in­for­ma­tion on the im­por­tance of en­cour­ag­ing chil­dren to play out­doors, vis­it http://www.com­mu­ni­ty­play­things.co.uk/re­sources/ar­ti­cles/out­door-play.html.