After issuing my challenge to other bloggers to find something quirky and unusual in their neighbourhood, Natural, of Thinking Out Loud, posted this rather delightful mixed bag as a response. Buried in there is a link to a video documentary which appears to have been made by the youth of Maplewood, New Jersey, with the help of various locals. Watch it before reading the rest of this. It’s enlightening, the young people put their point across well, and the movie is very watchable.
It got me thinking. Maplewood is not unusual in this one failing, nor is it exclusively an American problem. I think many of our own towns and cities fail the younger generations in this way. You might almost expect it in villages with a small population, because they simply don’t have the resources to provide much – and yet they often manage very well. My own village is well served, since it hosts a local secondary school with an intake which covers several rural communities and this school provides evening classes, sports facilities and a youth club. We also have a busy village hall which offers various activities including Shotokan karate.
In other areas, where there is less to do, public benches have been removed to prevent local teens ‘hanging around’ and ‘making noise’. Okay, no-one wants groups of rowdy kids outside their door, but for crying out loud, do we as a society really not understand that if you give kids nothing to do and nowhere to go, they are going to be a damn nuisance? It’s like confining an adolescent border collie to a house and tiny garden with insufficient exercise and no mental stimulation. Is it, or is it not, going to turn into an uncontrollable hooligan? Of course it is. It is simple cause and effect. Hopefully, no sane person would expect otherwise.
So why do we expect our teens to get to the point where they’ve outgrown the kid stuff like playing round each other’s houses and biking around the park and playing on the swings and being taken to ballet classes and Cub Scouts, and miraculously turn themselves into steady, responsible young adults when we give them absolutely nothing to do and nowhere to go? They are still young and physical, and they don’t want to hang at home with the old fogeys, they need to get out and be doing.
We take away the biking and the swings and we give them a bunch of ‘don’ts’ – don’t bike or skateboard or roller blade on the pavements. Don’t climb on stuff. Don’t rough-house with your mates, and please! Don’t even think about freerunning, you might hurt yourself or break something or get in the way. And then we give them no alternatives at all and expect them to keep out of trouble.
Is it any wonder that they feel alienated? Is it any wonder that they sit in front of the computer chatting on IM, and MySpace, and Facebook, and playing games all day and half the night? Is it any wonder that they climb buildings and hang off bridges and spray graffiti, or that they get frustrated and break things, just because they can?
What is so hard about providing one single ‘you can hang out here’ venue in each community? Sure, these days you’ll have to police it, but actually, young people have always benefited from a supervising adult. And the cost – while high – is surely less than the policing and fixing and repainting you’ll be doing if you don’t amuse them, and much less than providing secure accommodation for repeat offenders.
I’m not completely naive (having raised two boys myself) and I don’t imagine that this is the easy fix to all social ills, but just think about it. If you take any young dog or horse or monkey and confine it and frustrate it, I guarantee there will be huge great wads of trouble, with a sizeable potential for harm, both to others and to themselves. Young people are not so very different.
What’s wrong with an area set aside for teens, with very much larger equipment for them to play on, or sit and hang out on? Now, I realise that in this litigation-minded society this ain’t gonna go down too well with the Powers That Be, but it’s maybe what they need. Young people need somewhere to exercise both mind and body, and they need to dare. To risk. To see how far they can push themselves.
And until we adults remember how we were as teens and do something constructive about that – are we not always going to have trouble?
Valerie/Natural did an AWESOME job !!
This is a really good post. I often wonder what my son will do when he is at that age where he is too old to ‘play’ but too young to be an ‘adult’ …stuck with nothing to do and no where to go!
“What’s wrong with an area set aside for teens, with very much larger equipment for them to play on, or sit and hang out on?”
NOTHING…I think we need to JUMP ON THAT IDEA
meleah rebeccahs last blog post..How About No.
Jay,
You’ve hit on a subject that has been festering since even I was a kid growing up in the late 60’s and early 70’s. The difference was, back then, even if there was nothing provided by the local governmental body as far as recreation, we always found a way to make our own fun. The huge housing development I grew up in, (not “council housing,” but a large private housing development called Co-op City) we faced a similar dilemma.
We used our heads. We made up street games to play and keep us busy. See my post:http://mrnighttime.blogspot.com/2008/04/i-am-killer-diller.html
for a little more…..
We also faced some of the same issues that kids today faced. When we were bored, we would hang out in the stairwell of the building, invariably being chased away by the cops for loitering. In one instance that I recall, (with a wry grin on my face) we were confronted by 2 cops, one from the floor above us, one below, and as there were about 15 of us hanging out, we chose the path of least resistance; we sped forward, down the staircase, rolled over the cop en masse, and high-tailed out of the building.
At the end of the day, the lack of things to do didn’t stop us. Then again, I lived in NYC. If there was nothing to do in your neighborhood, you went to another one, or you could hop on the subway and find somewhere to go to do something. I suppose the situation is different in smaller towns, as I have come to discover now living here in upstate NY. We had more choices than these smaller towns have.
You’re right though. Removing benches won’t make the problem go away, and only serves to hurt the community as a whole. It is not even a band-aid measure, but a knee-jerk reaction by local politicos with no sense of imagination or direction.
Mr. Nighttimes last blog post..The best payback……….
we are lucky in this county to have skate parks for the boys. even the small cities have them. nothing for the gals however
Dawns last blog post..Turkey Vulture
oooh, i love posts like this. my mind is stimulated, okay i need to get out more with the youngans.
it is very true, if you take something away from a kid, you have to provide an alternative. some kids go home to no one and the parents would rather have them, in our case, at the library…but once there they don’t know how to act and are looked at as a nuisance.
i never would have found those youtubes videos without your challege jay. glad you sent out the call. this was a GREAT “meme theme”..it’s different and forces you to dig a little deeper into your neck of the woods.
it would be great if everyone showed a little bit of where they lived (not inside the home) but neighborhood.
Naturals last blog post..Something Quirky, Something Old, Something Blue
Meleah Rebeccah – When my boys hit that age, I enrolled them in different things and drove them places – diving lessons was one, as I recall. It doesn’t solve the whole problem, but it helps. Trouble is, it takes committed parenting and there are many parents who don’t care enough. We were lucky to have an ‘adventure playground’ nearby too. Lots of big stuff plus occasional organised activities. Everywhere should have one.
Mr Nighttime ROFL at the policeman story! Poor guy!
Yeah, me too. We made our own fun, some of it dangerous. I grew up with brothers and we did things like make our own go-karts and (cringes at the memory) play on building sites. I spent that part of my youth in a village, and once we’d got into teenage years, we did a lot of walking, and hanging around the local shopping area. No-one moved us on in those days.
Dawn – We have a few BMX/Skateparks here, but often the kids have to pay! They’re commercial ventures, so they can’t afford to go very often. There is a free one a few miles from here, now, but it wasn’t there when my boys needed it.
Natural – Meleah’s right – you did a great job with that post! Thanks for the compliment on my idea! I’m glad it triggered such great thoughts from you, and the discovery of the vid!
Oh boy, do I have a comment on this! We live in a town known as “progressive” and yet, when it comes to dealing with kids, they are anything but. We have a very large population of under 21, with only community ctr, and 1 youth ctr. We recently had our first real gang violence, and the city reaction was to close down the parks at a certain time which also precludes the free concerts we’ve had. I feel it’s to much of an over-reaction, and not enough investigating to find other sources of entertainment or outlets for these children to do. So incredibly frustrating as a mom.
BTW, I’ve also had a tire come off when I was driving ~grin~. With my kids in the car :S. No injuries, just a lot of stress!
jts last blog post..61 posts
JT – It is frustrating. As a mother you know what your kids need.
I suppose the thing we have to remember is that there are kids who don’t have the same values and they can spoil things for the rest. What do you do if your youth centre is the focus of violence? The easy option is to close it, but that leaves one less place to go for the rest. I always worry about those ‘on the border’. The kids who might swing the wrong way. Just like the kids who are on the border of managing/not managing at school, they’re the ones who often lose out, and yet they’re just as deserving of our attention as those at both extremes, the very ‘good’ and the very ‘bad’.
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You’ve had a tyre come off? Mine was the whole wheel! LOL! No injuries here either, thank goodness.
Excellent post. I agree with you one hundred percent about kids desperately needing adequate structured activities as they get older. As you say, they are young; they have boundless energy. Unfortunately the activities kids like today, like hanging out at the mall or getting together for skateboarding or street racing, can be fraught with so much danger.
My son (age 19) is a very social young man and he struggles with this because we don’t allow him to hang out in large groups of kids. Luckily he has lots of friends though, and they are constantly in touch by their cell phones. We live near a huge manmade lake and there is a new dam there with pedestrian walkways, and he’ll go sit over there on the tailgate of his truck, looking at the water and strumming his guitar. Until the next text message from one of his “buds” comes in, that is … which won’t be long! Then he’ll meet them somewhere to shoot hoops and talk about life, until curfew. That doesn’t sound very exciting to me, but he loves it!
Anyway, I don’t know what the answer is but good for you, for thinking of the kids. They are so often an ignored segment of society until they do something wrong. They need our help and guidance and support.
Jennys last blog post..How Do You Spell Subway? Q-U-I-Z-N-O-S
Jenny – thank you!
I never minded mine getting involved in dangerous stuff, providing it was all properly done and legal… youngest was my daredevil. He had a mini-motorbike at eleven, went carting and urban biking and skateboarding and rollerblading, as well as the stuff we could organise for him. It was terrifying, yet I recognised that this kid – already disaffected at school just desperately needed an outlet, so I shut my eyes and crossed my fingers. He had a few bumps and scrapes , knocked a few teeth loose, but he came through okay, thank God, and is now a steady young man. Again, thank God. That one could easily have gone the other way.
I’m glad your young man is doing so well, too!
You make some excellent points. We live in a small town with no gathering place other than the school which offers an open gym once a week in the winter and a basketball hoop outside. But we have rivers and streams and hiking trails, hunting and fishing. My 14 year old would like to see a skate park and some tennis courts would be nice. The town does offer a summer rec program where kids get taken to a pool for a morning 5 days a week in July with free lunch offered after, but that is geared more towards ages 5 to 12.
windyridges last blog post..Dog Loving Knitters
Hello, and welcome, Windyridge!
Yes, that’s the problem, isn’t it? Most of these organised activities are geared more towards younger kids. I’d like to see a return to the days when there was more reliance on the natural stuff like hiking and exploring the countryside, but it seems to be made more and more difficult. For instance, my parents’ generation did things like train ferrets, and go rabbiting if they lived in the country, but this is now illegal under the new laws to stop hunting with animals. And then there’s the thing about fear. We tend to want to wrap our kids in cotton wool these days.
Oy, don’t get me started!
When my sons were in their late teens, they loved to get together with a few friends to play some road hockey – a very Canadian thing that’s been going on for generations. The basic rule is simple – when a car comes, the first person who sees it, yells, “CAR!” and everyone gets out of the way. It’s all very civilized. Then, someone complained to the powers-that-be that it was “unsafe” for the players and for the drivers who might have to slow down and drive around them – never mind that they were usually on a quiet side street.
So, the boys moved to an unused, weedy tennis court. They got brooms, cleaned it up and started playing there instead. Guess what? After a few weeks, some guy started yelling at them that it was a “tennis court” and that they weren’t allowed to play hockey there. It didn’t matter that no one was using it for tennis and that it hadn’t been used as a tennis court for years because of the weeds and cracks; he wanted them to leave or he’d call the park authorities. What’s wrong with this picture? Here you have young people who were taking the initiative to keep themselves occupied in a constructive way and they are told to get lost.
. . . rant, rant. Sorry.
ells last blog post..O is for
Hi, Ell! Nice to see you over here!
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I just don’t understand why people like that don’t see what they’re doing! Don’t they remember being young themselves? Or is it that they were never allowed to have fun, so no-one else can have fun either?