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mohave
Age is so irrelevant these days. .
So true. It's all about attitude. I know 20 year olds who act and think like decrepit old men and women. And I know several 80 and 90 year old folks who have totally positive attitudes, and consequently seem and feel much younger than they are. A lot of hot springs soaking and a lot of outdoor activity where movement is required go a long way toward a long life. Of course genetics plays a huge factor too. I don't criticize young folks; this is just my observation. They need to get outside more and just play. Forget the video games and cell phones for a while and go take a hike. Many young folks have Vitamin D deficiencies because they simply don't get exposed to sunlight enough.
More free play is needed. Not adult -organized structured play. In school, and in other settings where adults are in charge, they make decisions for children and solve children’s problems. In play, children make their own decisions and solve their own problems. In adult-directed settings, children are weak and vulnerable. In play, they are strong and powerful. The play world is the child’s practice world for being an adult. We think of play as childish, but to the child, play is the experience of being like an adult: being self-controlled and responsible. To the degree that we take away play, we deprive children of the ability to practice adulthood, and we create people who will go through life with a sense of dependence and victimization, a sense that there is some authority out there who is supposed to tell them what to do and solve their problems. That is not a healthy way to live.
Children’s play has been declining steadily since the 1950s and 1960's, Childhood mental disorders have been increasing. It’s not just that we’re seeing disorders that we overlooked before. Clinical questionnaires aimed at assessing anxiety and depression, for example, have been given in unchanged form to normative groups of schoolchildren in the US ever since the 1950s. Analyses of the results reveal a continuous, essentially linear, increase in anxiety and depression in young people over the decades, such that the rates of what today would be diagnosed as generalized anxiety disorder and major depression are five to eight times what they were in the 1950s. Over the same period, the suicide rate for young people aged 15 to 24 has more than doubled, and that for children under age 15 has quadrupled. Studies have shown that lack of free play is a major cause of this increase in child mental disorders.
Another thing I've observed since this reduction in free play is a decline in empathy and a rise in narcissism. Empathy refers to the ability and tendency to see from another person’s point of view and experience what that person experiences. Narcissism refers to inflated self-regard, coupled with a lack of concern for others and an inability to connect emotionally with others. A decline of empathy and a rise in narcissism are exactly what we would expect to see in children who have little opportunity to play socially. Children can’t learn these social skills and values in school, because school is an authoritarian, not a democratic setting. School fosters competition, not co-operation; and children there are not free to quit when others fail to respect their needs and wishes.
Anyway, I'll get off my high horse now, I gotta go out and play!!!
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/05/2014 09:10AM by Paul P..
