Children need their fresh air

Kids should be outsiders.
And we mean that in the kindest of ways.

In fact, a North Carolina group has launched Take a Child Outside week, starting on Sept. 24. The idea took root last year in North Carolina and already has spread to most of the 50 states and overseas.

Now, on the one hand, this idea of encouraging kids to get out of doors is a very cool thing.
On the other, it’s a pretty sad one. We need a special week to encourage children to do what should come naturally?

Apparently so.
“Naturally” being the operative word.
Playing baseball is a good thing to do out of doors, but it’s not what the organizers have in mind. They want children to engage with nature.
Fishing would fit, or hiking, or collecting rocks, or watching the stars, or rolling down a hill, or climbing a tree, or petting a pony, or exploring the woods, or learning to identify bugs, or lying in the yard and daydreaming about clouds … any of the dozens of things kids of earlier generations did without being coached.

Nowadays, kids have to be pushed outside. “When I was a kid, you had to [be pushed to] come inside when the street lights came on,” said Liz Baird of Raleigh, who organized last year’s home-state effort.
A related effort is the No Child Left Inside Act (we are not making this up), designed to provide more federal funding for environmental education. Supporters cite many of the same benefits as do the folks with Take a Child Outside, such as:

—Outdoor activities cut down on childhood obesity and its attendant health problems.

—Connecting with the natural world expands knowledge and imagination, creativity and observation skills.

—It disrupts the TV/computer/PlayStation syndrome, in which children exercise only a narrow range of brain capacity.

—Outdoor play also helps new generations appreciate the environment — a critical understanding if natural resources are to be preserved.
The experts have all sorts of practical reasons for getting youngsters to play outside. They tend to forget one important reason.
It’s fun.

So, send the kids out to play. Better yet, go play with them.