Where have all the children gone?

We live in a very small village—much smaller than the ones I grew up in. One thing I find odd: I know there are fewer children here, but, why do I never see them? Well occasionally I’ll see a dozen or so get off a school bus, but, then they disappear. Sometimes I’ll see a ten or twelve year old pedaling his bike along the highway, but he has the appearance that he is doing it to get from one place to another, not to just ride.

I know there are too many stories in the press about children being assaulted or abused but in most cases the perpetrators are their own families, relatives, and friends of the family. I don’t think there are any more boogie-men hiding behind bushes waiting for an unwary child to fall into their clutches than there were when I was young. We kids knew all about the strange adults in town and stayed well-clear of them. In fact, I think that everyone knew that Charlie’s uncle was a bit off.

My point is that when I was a child in the 1950’s the outdoors belonged to the children. That was our place in the world. We were not even allowed to be in the house except during severe weather. And, I am certain that the outdoors had always belonged to children. It has only been an incremental and almost imperceptible change over the past five or so decades that have lead to this world where the fields and streams that once used to team with children are now silent.

Now when I say that the outdoors belonged to the children, I mean that in an almost literal sense. We had our appointed meeting places: tree forts, porches, street corners, whatever. We had no government so places used to simply evolve depending on the season. And, with the seasons, our activities changed. Summers meant elaborate games of “Cowboys and Indians;” one group of children would go off and hide in the forest and then the rest of us would hunt them. When found we’d point our fingers at each other and shout, “Bang! Bang! You’re dead!” “Am not! I got you first!” “No you didn’t.” Sometimes I didn't  find or was found by anyone. I’d simply roam the forest just outside of town, all afternoon, until I heard a distant voice call my name to let me know it was dinner-time.

Summer evenings were special. While the adults gathered on someone’s front porch to chat and drink beer, we would play “Hide ‘n’ Seek.” It could be played in the daylight, but, it was a far superior game when played in the dark. Adults would cheer us on and call out advice as we crept closer and closer to home base before making the final dash and shouting “Olly-olly, home free!” as we touched the home base tree. I learned that I could become invisible simply by lying in a slight hollow in the ground.

Elora, where I lived between the ages of 8 and 10, is situated on both sides of the Grand River at a point where it cuts a deep canyon especially where it meets the Irving River. Of course we were always told to stay away from the river, but, how else were we to fish? Adults never chastised us for engaging in fishing. Also the cliffs along the southern side were ripe with berry bushes in early summer. It was natural that we would search them out. And, at the base of the cliffs were caves that demanded to be explored. Today, if I look down from the bridge that crosses the Irving just before it meets the Grand, I can’t imagine how we managed to get down there at the water’s edge, about 100 feet below. But, we had our ways. I recall being indignant when fences were put up along the cliff’s edges for, as we disdainfully said, “the tourists.”

When did the outdoors stop being a place for children? Even as a teenager in downtown Toronto we spent the greater part of the day outdoors, hanging around street corners, in school yards, walking along the railway tracks. We talked ceaselessly about girls, rock ‘n’ roll, and school. After I moved to Montreal in 1967 I still used to see gangs of kids from time to time wandering the city. They were simply a part of the landscape. Even in the early 1980’s when our children were small, they spent a fair bit of time outdoors riding their bikes around the condo court and getting together with other kids in the court. Then, they stopped just going “out.” Instead it seemed like it was all prearranged meetings involving parents driving them to friends’ houses. Then, worse, we moved to a rural location thinking, mistakenly as it turned out, that it would be a great adventure for them.

Where, when I was a child, I would have been outside every sunny day exploring the forest we lived in, building tree forts, and creating secret hiding places, they stayed inside. When urged to go out they would complain about “bugs,” (I admit, the black flies were pretty rough for a few weeks each spring.) The older ones liked baseball well enough, but, it was always to play in organized events, never a pick up game with whomever happened by.  Frankly, they all admitted at one time or another that they hated living there. There was “nothing to do.”

However, having boys who could find nothing to do in the vast outdoors, does not explain why there are not more children out there today. I did know of some parents who were extremely over-protective; their children had to be slathered in sunscreen, hats on head, sunglasses, no bit of skin exposed except, perhaps, a hand or two. And, the child would always have a watchful adult attached.  But those were the extremist minority—at least, so I hoped. We seemed to have lost the concept of simple free unstructured and unsupervised time where children learn at their own pace whatever it is they need to learn. We seem to have replaced it with fear of the sun that has warmed and nourished our planet for billions of years, of the soil that supports us, of the plants and animals that have always lived around us.

And, most tragically, have replaced it with fear and suspicion of our fellow humans.