Reply to What's wrong with a kid being "overscheduled"?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]To the folks that highly value unstructured kid-led playtime (I think it's important too!), but have been disappointed that kids are not outside roaming the neighborhood for your kid to play with, what have you done from there?  Just given up and your unscheduled kid plays alone every day?  Have you texted parents of classmates and their friends and asked them for a playdate?  (Do your kids have friends?)  Invite them over -- I don't believe you that no one has time for some playdates.  My kids do lots of activities and so do most of their friends (we like it this way, thanks) and we arrange playdates all the time.  My kids have several a week.  Surely you have the bandwidth to do this since you are not dealing with EC activities.  You could even also sign them up for a few afternoons of school aftercare (I'm not even kidding) -- it's typically just unstructured playtime.   [/quote]

Aftercare at school is not the same thing at all. School has rules and guidance for what kids do and how. At our school, the paras yell at kids for climbing up the slide instead of sliding down. Very different from 2 or 3 kids tooling around outside unsupervised and having to think, argue, cooperate, decide, keep track of time, etc.[/quote]

Also, jeez, don't let perfect be the enemy of the good.  My point is that there are plenty of way to get your kid unstructured playtime even if you don't have some idyllic neighborhood that you have created in your head and even if it doesn't look precisely how you describe.  :roll:  :roll:   [/quote]

Hmm... having had two kids in and out of aftercare, I am not sure its problem was too much "structure"! Sometimes quite the opposite--to the point that I think it works much better for extraverted kids that do well with little supervision--and might help a kid who wanted more casual hanging out.

That is my point. You seem to think my desire to have kids play together on their own is some weird, old fashioned ideal. Um it’s the easiest thing to do. You let two kids of a similar age outside in the yard and let them play. It’s just hard for me to do as the parent of an only child in a town full of extremely scheduled young children. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with aftercare. Im saying that doesn’t address the issue at hand. [/quote][/quote]

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