We lived in a small town in North Dakota when our children were born. In that place at that time, we went outside every day. We had one car for our family. We walked to work. We walked to the Post Office to get our mail six days a week. We walked to the grocery store, drug store and hardware store most of the time. It was our way of life.

When the kids were 2 and 4, we moved to Boise, Idaho, a much larger town. Work was a mile away. I would occasionally walk, sometimes ride my bike, and often drive to work. We had two cars. Our mail was delivered to our home. All of our shopping involved using the car. Still, we worked hard to give our children lots of opportunities to be outdoors. We built a new fence around the back yard of our home. We built a climbing structure with a platform for them. We went to the park regularly. We headed for the hills to hike and ski and camp as often as possible.

But I know how a bit of fear can change a lifestyle. The streets were more dangerous. There was an irrigation canal behind our house that required a significant barrier to keep it from enticing the children. I’ve never been a city guy, though we’ve lived in cities, so I was a bit unsure of what our risks were. We invested in quality locks and watched our kids carefully. By the time we moved to Boise we had a television set and our children were allowed to watch a few programs. But it was several years before we had a VCR and our kids tell us that when they were growing up their television watching was very restricted compared to their friends. We didn’t have a video game in our house until our kids were teens and purchased the game system on their own. There were rules about the use of the game, and we played every game with the kids and knew what they were seeing on the screen.

The world is not like that any more. Almost every day we read of some form of violence directed at children. Children are not allowed to roam freely and unsupervised out of doors. They go outside only for planned activities. Their lives are filled with lots of appointments for scheduled activities and very few opportunities for unstructured play. Televisions have multiple devices connected to deliver all kinds of entertainment and education. Some of the video game systems provide opportunities to interact, get up and get exercise. And they are fun to play.

And children stay indoors more than ever before.

In 2005 Richard Louv coined the phrase “nature deficit disorder.” He wrote about the human cost of alienation from nature and cited “diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties and higher rates of physical and emotional illness.” His term, while clever – and accurate – is not accepted as a medical condition.

It is hard to say that it is not a health crisis, however. Educators have discovered that children learn better when part of their lessons are delivered out of doors and that symptoms of ADHD improve when children spend more time out of doors. In a recent poll conducted in Britain, children reported that happiness depends more on being outside than on owning more technology.

Parents however, seem to be obsessed with buying more gadgets for their children and scheduling more and more structured activities in their children’s lives. In fact the response to each wave of studies about children’s need to be outdoors has been an increase of structured outdoor activities. Instead of allowing children to hike and play outdoors, more planned activities are added to children’s lives. Participation in an organized sports team counts as “outdoors time” in the minds of many parents. That leads to more purchases and before long children and teens are practicing their sports in indoor venues. Here in Rapid City indoor practice areas for baseball and soccer were deemed “necessary.” Recently the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks opened the Outdoor Learning Center in Rapid City. The centerpiece of the facility is a large, brand-new building where classes and programs are held indoors. It has a 4,600 gallon aquarium and dozens of stuffed animals displayed indoors. Remember, we live in a town where wild turkeys and deer wander through our yard every day. But we now have a place where we can go indoors to experience nature.

We are all familiar with the statistics. Rates of obesity, self-harm and mental health disorders diagnosed in children have been on a steady increase for the past 40 years. Our children are less healthy than we were at their age. And we are generally less healthy than our parents. Still, we keep thinking that the solution involves buying more gadgets or constructing more buildings.

What if we decided that instead of more organized activities, children needed more free time? What if instead of developing trail systems, we decided children needed more empty lots? What if instead of forming more leagues, we took more picnics? And here is a radical suggestion: what if families set aside one day each week with no other purpose but to give thanks to God and spend time with each other?

OK that last one is a commandment. One of my teachers once said, “How do we expect to get people to obey commandments about adultery, stealing and murder when we can’t get them to observe the Sabbath?”

Still, now that I’ve become a grandfather and what many consider to be a grumpy old man, I’ve decided that I support less structure – not more for children. We don’t need more programs and planned activities. We need more days off. We don’t need more ballparks and soccer fields. We need more sandlots and open space. We don’t need more landscaping and manicured lawns. We need more plants that children can pick and places where they can get dirty.

However, despite my rhetoric, I guess I don’t really expect video game sales to drop under the pressure of a new wave of mud pie making. Still, wouldn’t that be fun?

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.