Dig It
One of the advantages of my current house is that it is directly in front of the neighborhood swings and playground. Our living room has three floor to ceiling windows and a glass door, so that if I wanted to, I could send the kids outside and sit in a recliner with a frosty cold beverage and still be able to see what they were doing 75% of the time (and isn’t that really enough?). Actually, since I am slightly paranoid, they are never outside for more than 45 seconds or so without me, but when we are all inside we can sit and stare out the windows and watch other people/critters play/expire at the playground/on our back deck (concrete slab).
I have previously described the nasty sand that is under the swings behind the house, and although as I write this I feel like I need a shower from just thinking about it, I have let the kiddies play back there when they are so inclined. The last one to venture back there was Marty, who left the playground and went back to our “deck” where he picked up several pails and shovels and headed back to the sand. I reacted to this development with absolute joy, that he had actually thought of a way to entertain himself and then executed it without even glancing in my direction. Normally the kiddies all want a lengthy discussion with a timeline, milestones, visual aids, etc., etc. before they are willing to leave my side (yes, I am that great of a mother that the kiddies can’t bear to be without me).
Of course, since Marty is two, when he was distracted by something shiny and moved on to another activity, he left all of the pails and shovels in the sand, and I have not gone back to retrieve them. They are the type of sand toys that Target sells for a dollar so that all the mothers (ahem, like me) who are too lazy to go pick up the sand toys can just go buy more when they disappear. And so this week, occasionally, I have looked out and seen other kiddies playing with the lame sand toys that we left out in the sand. Some of them use the shovels to put sand in the pails, some of them use the shovels to fling sand on the other kids on the swings, but the repeated spectacle of the kiddies and the shovels and pails reminded me of something that I read in The Power Broker (the book I am reading and will likely be reading for the rest of my life) which is about the development/destruction of NYC by Robert Moses.
According to the book, in 1932 in NYC, “which contained approximately 1,700,000 children under twelve years of age, there were only 119 [playgrounds], or one for every 14,000 children. ‘Children’s gardens’ in playgrounds were the only places in which slum children could engage in that most precious of childhood activities: digging…Playground supervisors made children stand on line with their pails and shovels until a spot in the gardens was open, and the lines were so long that most of the girls and boys could see at a glance that they were unlikely to get a turn.”
Obviously, that description is a little startling, and not just because there were so few playgrounds and sandboxes. Playground supervisors? That used to be a job? If the playground supervisor was not there, the playground was not opened. Can you imagine? In theory, it would be nice to think that some energetic college student could spend a summer entertaining children at a playground, lifting them on to swings and putting bandaids on their scrapes. Pushing the stinking swings (maybe I’ll sponsor one of those positions this summer) and giving the parents a chance to chat while the playground supervisor retrieved the shriekers from the top of the monkey bars (of course, many of you are probably thinking of the other end of the spectrum – playground supervisor = child molester, but I’m referring to the theoretical world here). Anyhoo…
I can appreciate that children need to dig, and actually I enjoy a good construction project on the beach with the kids (because beach sand is much cleaner than playground sand. Shut up. Yes it is.). My dad built us a sandbox when we were young, and even though it was uncovered and often filled with debris and dessicated worms, it was still fun. So, I figure I’ll leave the buckets and shovels out there for any kiddie who wanders by and wants to dig. I thought for a while about doing a little public works project out there myself, maybe putting out a big bucket with all kinds of shovels and sand toys in it, but that would probably disappear. Things are probably fine the way they are. No one will bother with faded $1 sand toys, except for the kiddies who really want to dig.
I have previously described the nasty sand that is under the swings behind the house, and although as I write this I feel like I need a shower from just thinking about it, I have let the kiddies play back there when they are so inclined. The last one to venture back there was Marty, who left the playground and went back to our “deck” where he picked up several pails and shovels and headed back to the sand. I reacted to this development with absolute joy, that he had actually thought of a way to entertain himself and then executed it without even glancing in my direction. Normally the kiddies all want a lengthy discussion with a timeline, milestones, visual aids, etc., etc. before they are willing to leave my side (yes, I am that great of a mother that the kiddies can’t bear to be without me).
Of course, since Marty is two, when he was distracted by something shiny and moved on to another activity, he left all of the pails and shovels in the sand, and I have not gone back to retrieve them. They are the type of sand toys that Target sells for a dollar so that all the mothers (ahem, like me) who are too lazy to go pick up the sand toys can just go buy more when they disappear. And so this week, occasionally, I have looked out and seen other kiddies playing with the lame sand toys that we left out in the sand. Some of them use the shovels to put sand in the pails, some of them use the shovels to fling sand on the other kids on the swings, but the repeated spectacle of the kiddies and the shovels and pails reminded me of something that I read in The Power Broker (the book I am reading and will likely be reading for the rest of my life) which is about the development/destruction of NYC by Robert Moses.
According to the book, in 1932 in NYC, “which contained approximately 1,700,000 children under twelve years of age, there were only 119 [playgrounds], or one for every 14,000 children. ‘Children’s gardens’ in playgrounds were the only places in which slum children could engage in that most precious of childhood activities: digging…Playground supervisors made children stand on line with their pails and shovels until a spot in the gardens was open, and the lines were so long that most of the girls and boys could see at a glance that they were unlikely to get a turn.”
Obviously, that description is a little startling, and not just because there were so few playgrounds and sandboxes. Playground supervisors? That used to be a job? If the playground supervisor was not there, the playground was not opened. Can you imagine? In theory, it would be nice to think that some energetic college student could spend a summer entertaining children at a playground, lifting them on to swings and putting bandaids on their scrapes. Pushing the stinking swings (maybe I’ll sponsor one of those positions this summer) and giving the parents a chance to chat while the playground supervisor retrieved the shriekers from the top of the monkey bars (of course, many of you are probably thinking of the other end of the spectrum – playground supervisor = child molester, but I’m referring to the theoretical world here). Anyhoo…
I can appreciate that children need to dig, and actually I enjoy a good construction project on the beach with the kids (because beach sand is much cleaner than playground sand. Shut up. Yes it is.). My dad built us a sandbox when we were young, and even though it was uncovered and often filled with debris and dessicated worms, it was still fun. So, I figure I’ll leave the buckets and shovels out there for any kiddie who wanders by and wants to dig. I thought for a while about doing a little public works project out there myself, maybe putting out a big bucket with all kinds of shovels and sand toys in it, but that would probably disappear. Things are probably fine the way they are. No one will bother with faded $1 sand toys, except for the kiddies who really want to dig.
posted by Shannon at 9:41 PM
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