Wellness
HEALTH
NO
PLAY
When I was a kid
ZONE
growing up in St. Catharines, my
friends and I would take off, on foot
or on bikes, and play by ourselves
for hours. We’d head to the
escarpment (“Mom, we’re going up
the mountain!”) and wander through
the woods all day long, pretending
to be explorers or treasure hunters.
Sometimes, we’d meet outside and
decide what we wanted to play.
Softball, hopscotch, jump rope, red
32 | whiteoaksclub.com | spring 2016
rover, tag, hide and seek - we’d play
on the street, in our yards, at the
neighborhood park. Grownups didn’t
dream of intervening and we liked it
that way. There was no time frame
for our games, we made up our own
rules, sorted out our disagreements
and we survived relatively unscathed
until the street lights came on, or
our moms called us in for supper.
Unfortunately, those days of
unfettered, free, unsupervised,
physically active play seem to be long
gone. Today, scheduled play dates are
the norm. Kids with athletic talent
are funneled from an early age into
organized, elite-le