[208] Como Encajonamos a los Ninos en 3 Generaciones

Esta cae en la categoria de rant.  Hace dias que mis labores no me dejan actualizar el blog.  Hace semanas me ha estado trabajando lo siguiente.  Comparaba la libertad relativa que tenia cuando muchacho a las libertades que me dejan tener a un menor en el medio de una urbanizacion moderna.  Y me recorde de la imagen de arriba, que salio de aqui:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-lost-right-roam-generations.html

Los ni/nos cada vez tienen mas restricto su ambiente.  La situacion esta tan peligrosa en estos dias que se nos vende que es un acto de maltrato dejar que un menor vaya solo a la tienda o que merodee por la urbanizacion.  En mi caso tuve un caso con el Departamento de la Familia investigo un maltrato solo porque a un vecino no le gusto que mi hijo hubiese subido solo al techo de la casa.  Ese es el tema de aquel articulo...

When George Thomas was eight he walked everywhere.
It was 1926 and his parents were unable to afford the fare for a tram, let alone the cost of a bike and he regularly walked six miles to his favourite fishing haunt without adult supervision.
Fast forward to 2007 and Mr Thomas's eight-year-old great-grandson Edward enjoys none of that freedom.
He is driven the few minutes to school, is taken by car to a safe place to ride his bike and can roam no more than 300 yards from home


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-lost-right-roam-generations.html#ixzz1dM3AofGq

Bueno.  Ya la gente se esta cansando de los diagnosticos innecesarios de ADHD  o Asperger solo para vender medicamentos.  O por hacerle la vida facil a los padres.  Mi logica es la siguiente.  Porque se quejan de que un nino este inquieto si lo tienen encerrado entre 4 paredes todo el dia.  En mi epoca yo estaria severamente drogado... Este articulo de The Atlantic, donde se expone que la falta de juego e interaccion con otros menores son los que tienen a nuestra juventud tan ansiosa.  Les dejo este articulo aqui:

http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/10/all-work-and-no-play-why-your-kids-are-more-anxious-depressed/246422/
http://www.metafilter.com/108353/All-work-and-no-play-makes-Jack-a-neurotic-boy

THE DECLINE OF PLAY
An article in the most recent issue of the American Journal of Play details not only how much children's play time has declined, but how this lack of play affects emotional development, leading to the rise of anxiety, depression, and problems of attention and self control.
"Since about 1955 ... children's free play has been continually declining, at least partly because adults have exerted ever-increasing control over children's activities," says the author Peter Gray, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology (emeritus) at Boston College. Gray defines "free play" as play a child undertakes him- or her-self and which is self-directed and an end in itself, rather than part of some organized activity.
Gray describes this kind of unstructured, freely-chosen play as a testing ground for life. It provides critical life experiences without which young children cannot develop into confident and competent adults. Gray's article is meant to serve as a wake-up call regarding the effects of lost play, and he believes that lack of childhood free play time is a huge loss that must be addressed for the sake of our children and society.

FIVE WAYS PLAY BENEFITS KIDS
When children are in charge of their own play, it provides a foundation for their future mental health as older children and adults. Gray mentions five main benefits:
1. Play gives children a chance to find and develop a connection to their own self-identified and self-guided interests.
As they choose the activities that make up free play, kids learn to direct themselves and pursue and elaborate on their interests in a way that can sustain them throughout life. Gray notes that: "...in school, children work for grades and praise and in adult-directed sports, they work for praise and trophies.... In free play, children do what they want to do, and the learning and psychological growth that results are byproducts, not conscious goals of the activity."
2. It is through play that children first learn how to make decisions, solve problems, exert self control, and follow rules.
As children direct their own free play and solve the problems that come up, they must exert control over themselves and must, at times, accept restrictions on their own behavior and follow the rules if they want to be accepted and successful in the game.
As children negotiate both their physical and social environments through play, they can gain a sense of mastery over their world, Gray contends. It is this aspect of play that offers enormous psychological benefits, helping to protect children from anxiety and depression.
"Children who do not have the opportunity to control their own actions, to make and follow through on their own decisions, to solve their own problems, and to learn how to follow rules in the course of play grow up feeling that they are not in control of their own lives and fate. They grow up feeling that they are dependent on luck and on the goodwill and whims of others...."
Anxiety and depression often occur when an individual feels a lack of control over his or her own life. "Those who believe that they master their own fate are much less likely to become anxious or depressed than those who believe that they are victims of circumstances beyond their control." Gray believes that the loss of playtime lessons about one's ability to exert control over some life circumstances set the scene for anxiety and depression.
3. Children learn to handle their emotions, including anger and fear, during play.
In free play, children put themselves into both physically and socially challenging situations and learn to control the emotions that arise from these stressors. They role play, swing, slide, and climb trees ... and "such activities are fun to the degree that they are moderately frightening ... nobody but the child himself or herself knows the right dose."
Gray suggests that the reduced ability to regulate emotions may be a key factor in the development of some anxiety disorders. "Individuals suffering from anxiety disorders describe losing emotional control as one of their greatest fears. They are afraid of their own fear, and therefore small degrees of fear generated by mildly threatening situations lead to high degrees of fear generated by the person's fear of losing control." Adults who did not have the opportunity to experience and cope with moderately challenging emotional situations during play are more at risk for feeling anxious and overwhelmed by emotion-provoking situations in adult life.
4. Play helps children make friends and learn to get along with each other as equals.
Social play is a natural means of making friends and learning to treat one another fairly. Since play is voluntary and playmates may abandon the game at any time if they feel uncomfortable, children learn to be aware of their playmates' needs and attempt to meet them in order to maintain the play.
Gray believes that "learning to get along and cooperate with others as equals may be the most crucial evolutionary function of human social play ... and that social play is nature's means of teaching young humans that they are not special. Even those who are more skilled at the game's actions ... must consider the needs and wishes of the others as equal to their own, or else the others will exclude them." Gray cites increasing social isolation as a potential precursor to psychopathology and notes that the decline in play may be "both a consequence and a cause of the increased social isolation and loneliness in the culture."
5. Most importantly, play is a source of happiness.
When children are asked about the activities that bring them happiness, they say they are happier when playing with friends than in any other situation. Perhaps you felt this way when remembering your own childhood play experiences at the beginning of this article.
Gray sees the loss of play time as a double whammy: we have not only taken away the joys of free play, we have replaced them with emotionally stressful activities. "[A]s a society, we have come to the conclusion that to protect children from danger and to educate them, we must deprive them of the very activity that makes them happiest and place them for ever more hours in settings where they are more or less continually directed and evaluated by adults, setting almost designed to produce anxiety and depression."

El terror infundado, el departamento de la familia y otros han logrado eliminar casi por completo el juego en los ni/nos.  Articulos han mencionado cada vez menos juego menos libretad a los ninos.  Paso esto ahora con mi hijo, que se aburre leyendo libros o jugando videojuegos.  Lo de pasar horas muertas jugando en el campo o en varios bloques de mi urbanizacion es algo impensable en estos dias, a pesar del facil acceso a GPS y celulares.  Les dejo varios links interesantes aqui:
http://www.journalofplay.org/
http://www.journalofplay.org/sites/www.journalofplay.org/files/pdf-articles/3-4-article-gray-decline-of-play.pdf
http://www.journalofplay.org/sites/www.journalofplay.org/files/pdf-articles/3-4-interview-marano-skenazy.pdf

https://freerangekids.wordpress.com/about-2/
http://www.care2.com/causes/urgent-children-must-be-allowed-to-play.html

Escribo esta nota molesto por las dosis de medicamento que se le esta dando a mi hijo.  No por el medicamento, es necesario.  Sino por que la situacion y el ambiente de pasar un proceso de divorcio le hace pasar innecesariamente.
Tambien cuando veo a mis sobrinos y vecinos que le piden proyectos como si fueran universitarios.  Todo para que?  Para que respondan como automatas?  Para que esten hartos de la escuela al llegar al cuarto a/no? 
O sea.  Expliquenme como beneficia a un nene que un papa este dos dias buscando un journal cientifico a nivel universitario para explicar un experimento entretenido de ciencia.  O sea, esta amiga de mi hermana tiene un experimento cool para el nene, con quimicos y huevos...el concepto: el caparazon es una estructura caliza que se afecta con acidos o causticas se pierde en buscar ciencia en libros.  En estos casos se aprende de mezclar baches...
Yo no tuve que buscar journals de ciencia para que alguien me dijera que el cloro y la amonia no se podian mezclar.  Solo basto que el envase dijera que no se podia para yo ver como al mezclar se calentaba el envase y generaba gas cloro (*bua ja ja ja), o no necesitaba ver articulos de BLEVE o de bomberos para saber como hacer una bazooka de latas de refresco pegados con tape (*que buenos eran! que duro sonaban).
Sin embargo, a traves del juego, y preguntandole a los que sabian aprendi conceptos que aun hoy aplico hoy en dia como ingeniero ambiental.
Parece que con lo de ser precisos hemos matado lo divertido de la ciencia... Les dejo con otro articulo previo sobre ferias cientificas aqui...
http://alcantarillaalquimica.blogspot.com/2011/04/171-dead-seed-scrolls-p-01-p-04.html

Aunque...esos kits eran nasty...me hubiese gustado tener algunos de estos en mi era:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19481_the-8-most-wildly-irresponsible-vintage-toys_p2.html
http://www.jitterbuzz.com/scikits.html
http://boingboing.net/2011/07/21/vintage-chemistry-se.html