#532： How to Create a Neighborhood Where Kids Play Outside
Episode Stats
Summary
When my guest today had kids, he decided he wasn t going to let them grow up in another quiet, morgue-like neighborhood. Instead, he was going to figure out why kids weren t playing outside anymore and how to fix the problem. His name is Mike Lanza, and in his book Playberhood, he shares how he did just that.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast listen as you
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drive through most neighborhoods in america these days you might notice something missing
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the shrieks and laughter of kids playing outside when my guest today had kids he decided he wasn't
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going to let them grow up in another quiet morgue-like neighborhood instead he was going
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to figure out why kids weren't playing outside anymore and how to fix the problem his name is
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mike lanza and in his book playberhood turn your neighborhood into a place for play he shares how
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he did just that at the start of our conversation mike explains how he became an advocate for kids
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playing outside by themselves with minimal adult supervision he shares his theories on why outdoor
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play has decreased and why simply limiting screen time and participation in organized extracurriculars
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doesn't solve the problem mike then explains why you need a critical mass of kids to be playing
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outside before outdoor play becomes a norm and what parents can do to create this critical mass by
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changing the environment in their yard and the social dynamics in their neighborhood after the
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show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash playberhood
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mike lanza welcome to the show yeah thank you so you are the author of the book playberhood turn your
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neighborhood into a place for play so tell us about this idea of playberhood that you came up with what's
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your story how did this all come about well uh well i was living in san francisco with my wife back in
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the early 2000s and we had just been you know single adults having a great time in san francisco
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and when my wife became pregnant with our first child who turned out to be a son all of a sudden i i
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realized boy i have i haven't i really don't know what childhood is like these days i haven't really
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hung out with people who have kids very much i've just been living in my own single world you know
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urban single world but i was an older father to be i was 40 years old so i had lots of friends who had
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kids and i started paying attention and asking questions and i remember one day i was at a friend's
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house and it really hit me wow his son was arguing my friend's son was arguing with him about you know
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scheduling and being with this kid or being with that kid where they were going and it sounded awful
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to me and i turned to my friend and i said so why doesn't he just go out and play and my friend said
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oh kids don't do that anymore and i thought wow and and you know when i really processed it i i thought
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to myself the best things in my life the best memories of my childhood are are just not possible
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for this kid and apparently according to my friend are not possible for for most kids these days maybe
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all kids these days and i i just can't accept that i'm not going to raise my kid that way and uh so my
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first reaction was well i'm just going to buy a house in a great neighborhood that has lots of kids
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play and i'll solve the problem i thought it was a problem you know i could just i could just solve
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with money and and moving and i searched the search ended up ended up searching for over two
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years for a house and i never found a house in a great neighborhood that was available and with
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lots of kids playing i just realized how how difficult that was it was almost impossible but what
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i did find was a house that had the bones had the had the infrastructure it had it was very walkable
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a lot of good destinations close by calm street lots of kids living in the area not playing outside but
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living in the area kids our kids age at the time i had a four-year-old and a one-year-old and we had
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thought maybe we'd have another kid and i thought well that's the best i'm going to do i'll move to
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this place and it has a lot of things that we can make a make into a great place for kids to play
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and that's really when i started play over hood so yeah that point you made about you're some of
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your greatest memories as a kid took part like when you took part in unsupervised play with just your
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buddies right you're just by yourself with other kids like some of like i can when you said that
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like i can think i started thinking back to my memories as a child and yeah like most of them
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happened like when i was like playing in a creek by myself with my friends like there's no adults
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around yeah it's it's i don't want to i i don't want my parents to feel bad they're they're passed
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away or they may they rest in peace but uh yeah my best memories most of my best memories from my
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childhood are don't have any adults around and i think there's a good reason for that i think that
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we get an awful lot out of our parents that we treasure the rest of our lives but they set us up
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for great experiences when they're not around and that's when we really learn the most that's when we
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grow the most and those are the most memorable experiences and boy it's sad childhood is just not
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not very good for most kids these days well talk about that what what's the problem like with kids
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not playing well you know people just say well the way kids are doing things now is just different
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it's not better it's not worse it's just different but you you make the case no actually because kids
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aren't playing there's some downsides to that what are those well there there are things that are
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the easy answers to that question are the measurable things and so one of the things that a lot of people
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talk about is childhood obesity big problem i don't know the exact statistics but some very large
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proportion of of kids is obese just so heavy so so overweight that they can't even really exercise
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well in some states in the united states like mississippi i remember hearing it's over 30 percent
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of of kids are obese less so in in other states but still higher everywhere than it was decades ago and
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that's measurable things things are a little less measurable are their emotional state there are some
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studies that have tried to compare kids today versus kids decades ago there's this one study that
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that where they give kids the same test and they've been doing it since 1937 or 38 i think and from that
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one study giving the same test all these years five times as many kids have emotional problems than had
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emotional problems back in the 30s and 40s five times we also have an increase in child and teenage
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suicide big big problem and then there are things that are really not measurable at all but i think
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are very very important the ability of kids to to make rules to to adjudicate disputes when they have an
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argument with somebody to bend to accommodate a kid who isn't as able who maybe needs some needs some
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special help all these things i group them into into you know what you might call for a kid play skills
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but as adults we want adults to be able to solve problems to create rules where there aren't good rules
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to create a society that works for everybody and these are the sorts of things we did what i did with my
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friends when we played our own games of pickup pickup baseball pickup basketball pickup two-hand
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tap football we were doing that every day we were you know deciding where to play we were making rules
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because they were always a little bit different we had arguments we solved the arguments we needed lots of
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kids to play so we let kids play who weren't as able as us and we bent the rules for them so there was one
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kid in our neighborhood who was mentally disabled and we wanted him to play softball with us and there was no
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way he could strike out he got as many strikes as he wanted and we wouldn't try to get him out really fast we
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would let him get to first base these are the kinds of things we want our adults to do and what i can i think we could
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argue adults are not so good at doing these days compared to a few decades ago yeah and you mentioned
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all those things those skills right rule making adjudicating disputes making accommodations for
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kids with special needs nowadays like adults do that for the kids like the adults make the decisions
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and it's not it's not no longer kid-led no it's no longer kid-led and so so kids think that their job
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is to show up and you know to do what they're told and you know not only is that not you know
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they're not learning a lot but to try this and you know people who are listening go to a field and
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maybe you have kids who are in in youth sports go to a field and listen for how many cries of laughter
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shrieks of laughter and and joy that you hear it doesn't happen very often it's pretty quiet it's
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pretty serious and i would argue it's just not that much fun but you know if if you have a group
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of kids who are playing on their own you hear a lot more of that sort of thing kids are not growing
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and they're just not having as much fun as they used to but yeah yeah they're not having fun but
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like when they're having fun with play like as you said they're learning some really important
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life skills it's a win-win yeah right play yeah play it's fun and it's also serious stuff you're
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learning serious stuff but let's talk about like why like why why don't you hear those
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shrieks of laughter anymore when you drive through neighborhoods what what's happened say since
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i mean even when i was a kid which was 30 years ago like what's changed since then well there are
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two ways to answer this question and the most common way people answer the question is as a social
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scientist oh let's diagnose the problem and you know a lot of people have answers and you know and
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they're they're essentially correct answers have lots of a lot you know tv now has 500 channels we
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have the internet we have mobile phones ipads we have a lot a lot more activities than we used to
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that's sort of the standard way to answer the question and from a social science point of view
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that makes a lot of sense the problem with answering the question that way is that that leads you to come
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up with solutions that address those causes and the solutions if you frame the problem as too much
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of this too much of that too much of that your solution is let's take them away and so you hear a lot
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of parents saying no you know we're gonna cut out screen time you know only one hour a day or we're you
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know we're we're not gonna we're not gonna sign up kids for that many activities and we're just gonna push
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them out the door and it doesn't work it's you know that we found out back in the late 80s for those of us
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who are old enough that you know soviet style you know just just withholding things from people
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doesn't doesn't give people a reason to to change their behavior it's just miserable and that's what
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happens you you push kids outside without anything to do and they look out in the neighborhood and
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there's nothing going on so i i'd like to frame the problem i do agree you know they have too many
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too much screen time and you know too many activities and you know that they need to be doing other
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things but i'd rather frame the problem in terms of what are neighborhoods like today versus what
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were neighborhoods like decades ago so if you push a kid outside they look around neighborhoods are
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boring aren't they i mean why would someone want to go out and play in the neighborhood today when
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there's nothing going on it's you know it's an awful choice so neighborhoods have kind of lost or let's
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say they're losing in the competition for kids attention you know if kids a kid has an extra hour in an
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afternoon he or she is going to think well i could turn on my television it's it's going to have
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something i could turn on my ipad i can play this game it's going to work it's going to be there what
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happens if i go outside there's a very very low probability that anything's going on and so they
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choose they choose the video game or they they choose the television so a lot of what the emphasis
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of neighborhood is is about how about encouraging parents giving parents ideas ways to make their
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neighborhood into an interesting place that actually is a a competitor with television with video games
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with the other activities so that so that the neighborhood is attractive to kids and so that's the way
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i'd like to frame the problem and this way you frame the problem speaks to the network effect that you
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talk about in the book about kids deciding whether they play or don't play outside right so if there
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are any kids out there playing no one's going to play but if there are kids out there playing
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then the kid more kids are more likely to play yeah that that's that sounds that sounds almost
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too simple but it's actually an important concept and the network effect is something that we see in a
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lot of i studied economics so i i like to think this way it's it's it comes very naturally to me but
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but if you think about for instance the different kinds of cell phone operating systems there's really
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two there's android and there's ios you know why are there only two well there used to be windows phone
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there used to be blackberry there used to be actually a lot of others some companies have tried to
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promote their own new smartphone operating systems but there's only two why is that because there's
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this network effect that if someone else uses ios that actually benefits me because i use ios
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because that means there will be more apps built for ios there'll be more apple stores around
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where they can repair and they can they can solve my problems and so i benefit from someone else's use
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of ios devices well the network effect works in neighborhoods like this you would think that the
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decision the family makes about let's say this summer now so what are kids doing in the summer
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you would think that that is a that's a private decision that has that is just something that you
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know is no one else's business but actually if my neighbors send all their kids to camp every day
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that affects my kids experience that means that my kids really can't have a good time
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in the neighborhood during the day in the summer during weekdays in the summer because every all the
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neighbor kids are out so whether we like it or not neighbors decisions about what their kids do
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and the kids decisions themselves actually have an effect on my kids so there's this network effect
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and what you find in in a network effect situation is that there's two generally two two possible
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equilibria one is nothing and the other is all all or nothing and so that's what that's that's what
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happens with neighborhood play you either have i mean if if if a kid wants to go out and is thinking
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about hey maybe i'll go outside and and check it out and see if anybody's out there if there's a a low
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probability but not zero there's a 10 chance or five percent chance that someone's out there
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why bother you know they they look us they look around there's there's a 90 or 95 chance there's
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nothing going on most likely there's nothing going on but if they turn on their their computer if they
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turn on their their their ipad there's a hundred percent chance that they're going to have something
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to do so so of 10 or five percent or even 20 chance tends to crash down to zero because no one
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wants to try if it's so low on the other hand if it's hopping if something's happening all the time
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then you know that that's that's attractive that people want to be there if there's something going
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on all the time so there's this natural tendency to have all or nothing and uh it's very important
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because you know parents think oh if i put the little tyke slide in my front yard i've done a good
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thing because i've given my kid something to do outside but the truth is that making because in
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this day and age kids don't play outside very much or hardly at all in most neighborhoods that
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making your neighborhood into a place where kids want to play you know and that's their choice to play
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is actually really hard you have to create critical mass so that kids have a hangout and they're showing up
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on a very regular basis yeah and so back say when you were a kid or i was a kid there were those
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there were those hangouts right like there might have been some kid's house like that was the hangout
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you'd all just show up there and then you decide what you're going to do that day or you'd show up at
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a local park or you'd show up at the creek but yeah that's not there a lot of neighborhoods don't have
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that anymore yeah and there's a there's a there's a term for a little academic on on you again but
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there's this term in sociology called a third place the idea of a third place
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put forth by a sociologist named ray oldenberg is that human beings have in history have had
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in general three different places in their life that were the foundation of their social life
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one of their first place is their home where their family is their second place is their
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is their is their workplace or school where they show up every day and and they have that social
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group there but then there's this third place and the third place isn't so formal it's a place that you
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show up when you want and when you show up there's almost always someone there who you want to see
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and you enjoy your time with them and you leave when you want to leave and so for adults the
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prototypical third place at least in the in the late 20th century was the cheers bar those guys those
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folks just showed up and they had instant social life and and they they could count on there being
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somebody there that they wanted to see and they want to hang out with for kids well for me i had a
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stretch of street between my house and a house across the street where we played ball every day
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there was a a place in the woods but there were these places that we just knew we could just show
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up and we had a very high probability that you know we weren't going to be we weren't there was going
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to be something going on and today these days you know kids still yearn for that almost no kids have
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that in their in the physical world and so facebook instagram snapchat have become the de facto third
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place uh for children today and it's really sad so do we have any do you have any idea like what
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critical mass is required in a neighborhood for like a neighborhood to take root have you been able
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to figure that out or see anything well yeah i i i i wish i could give you an exact answer but i'm
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i'll i'll give you my best answer by describing my neighborhood we uh and i know you're going you'll
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probably ask me about specifically what i've done to make my yard into a really compelling third place
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a really compelling hangout for kids but i think we've succeeded for the most part and i would say
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for our yard there are certain times of day it's not all times of day but certain times of day
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where it's quite likely that you'll find something going on so right now it's it's 10 o'clock in the
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morning on a weekday and it's dead there's nothing going on and you're usually isn't at least on a
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weekday on on weekend days that there often is but um late afternoon before dinner time say four or
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five o'clock there's almost always something going on and there's a lot of reasons for that one is
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my family has three boys you know and and right now they're 10 11 and 15 but growing up through the
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past few years they've been very very active being outside next door we have a family of of three boys
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slightly younger ages there are uh some by the way there's there's some houses very close to us
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next door another next door neighbor on the other side of us they never show up here uh they used to
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show up but you know we do have a good supply of kids here and that's one of the reasons we moved
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here and some of these kids not all of them become what i you know you could call the anchor tenants
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the kids who are here almost all the time and they form the foundation and then other kids show up
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because they know that if they they're not next door they're a block away two blocks away if they come
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there's going to be something going on we're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors
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and now back to the show well so let's talk about your what you did in your house to make it a to
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encourage the playbook because i think this is interesting because like what you're what we the
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end goal is like the kids are making the choices right and directing themselves but in order for that
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to happen the parents it seems like have to do you know set up a an environment to make that happen
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right so what you did you found out where there were kids it was walkable but like what did you do
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to get neighbor kids outside playing like what what's there at your house that makes it attractive
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well i'll start by saying there's some purists out there and i can understand there's purists of
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children's play who say oh my god you did all this work you shouldn't be doing that you should just
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kick the kids outside and they should play on their own because all kids really want to play
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and you know i agree with that theory the problem is we have a culture today in the 21st century a
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children's culture that is antagonistic to play you know there are there you know i talked about it
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before there are so many different choices kids have and other kids aren't playing and it's very
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deeply ingrained in in kids minds that the play is not something that they see other kids doing
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they don't see kids on tv doing it playing in neighborhoods so i have come to believe that
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parents need to do some work to set up the conditions and then i i i like to think and it's
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happened certainly happened in our case that once you set those conditions up and and and create the
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cultural change in your neighborhood then it has a life of its own and we've seen that so what have
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we done so there's two main components to what we've done there's the sort of the physical things
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we've done with our yard to make it into a very inviting place and then the other side is just the
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social engineering you will of walking around talking to people um kind of you know establishing
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the relationships and and getting to know people in the neighborhood who you know most people don't
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get to know their neighbors like we have so the first part physical the physical facility here i i i live
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on a let's see it's 150 foot long by by um 50 foot wide lot so that's 7 500 square feet that's average
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where we live i live in menlo park california so it's you know i guess kind of suburban and so it's
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big for a city lot but it's it's not that big for a suburban lot it's it's a not that big but what i did
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was i looked at our yard and i thought i i rethought literally honestly every square foot outside of our
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house i rethought in terms of how we could use it rather than how can i make it look like the other
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yards in the neighborhood or how can i make it look right for selling the house i don't plan on
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selling the house but but it's it's amazing if you sit and think about it how how people do not
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they don't they don't they don't think about how to use their their their space outside their house
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they're always thinking about oh what are the other neighbors doing and they've got these shrubs and
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they've got these flower gardens and they got all this all this stuff that actually isn't useful at
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all so that that's that's that's the that's the that's the highlight what we've done is is uh you
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know we we have all sorts of great facilities so in the front yard first thing we did was i tore out
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the pavers pavers are these you know stones uh in our driveway which the real estate agent will tell
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you oh it's luxurious and everybody wants pavers pavers are horrible for kids for a driveway because
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they're they're they're not smooth and what do kids want to do on a driveway they like to they
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like to roll little wheels they like to roll scooters rollerblades they they like to ride bikes
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they like to play basketball they like to play bouncy ball they like to draw a sidewalk chalk all of that
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doesn't work on a driveway with pavers or bricks or gravel smooth so i had the pavers taken out we we put
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smooth concrete uh there as smooth as like we could get it and that's that's paid many many
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dividends over the years we've also put in a picnic table in our front yard not our backyard because our
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backyard where we live in northern california is is fenced in and for some reason i i grew up in a
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place where we didn't have any fences i like seeing my neighbors for some reason where we live in
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northern california the custom is to put fences everywhere because for some reason you don't want
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to see your neighbors i don't know but when we eat outside we like to see our neighbors and so we
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have a lot of dinners in our front yard at our picnic table and people walk down the street they
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take walks in the evening they take walks with their dog and we always almost always start a
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conversation with somebody we see someone we know it's very social we have we have a lot of other
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things we have whiteboard we have 30 feet of whiteboard in the front yard we have some some
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public art some mosaics that we've made with a with a local artist we used to have a sandbox out
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there we've taken away since our kids are older we used to have a play river in the backyard by the
00:24:22.160
way i'll say i originally thought we're not doing anything in the backyard because we need to be out
00:24:27.120
in front meeting people and seeing people it's no good in us being in the backyard where people don't
00:24:33.120
see us but we've gotten a reputation people gotten to know our yard and we have a lot of we have
00:24:37.800
space in our backyard so we put some amazing things in our backyard a huge playhouse that we do sleep
00:24:43.740
overs in an in-ground trampoline ground level which is much safer than a trampoline that's that's above
00:24:50.220
ground it's also a lot more fun we have a play structure we have a zip line so we have a lot of
00:24:57.020
critical mass and you might say oh my gosh that's a lot of money you know that's a lot of that's a lot
00:25:01.940
of resources it is but you need to consider we live in a neighborhood with very expensive homes and
00:25:07.720
kids have the most amazing electronics inside the houses that you can imagine so we're in a
00:25:13.280
competition we're in a competition with every kid having a place where every kid has an ipad every
00:25:18.280
kid has hundreds of channels of television we've got a really compelling place that's the that's the
00:25:24.220
physical facilities on the other side especially when my kids were younger we were out playing in the
00:25:30.260
street or in our front yard pretty much every day after dinner some days before dinner like in the
00:25:34.860
winter if i had the time to take off of work we were out knocking on doors we would very most
00:25:40.880
likely walk to our grocery store right or ride bikes to our grocery store rather than than drive we got
00:25:46.500
to know our neighbors we we really spent a lot of time out there and our kids became very comfortable
00:25:52.260
being there they got to know other people we got to know people even people that you know
00:25:58.200
families that don't have kids and and a lot of empty nesters older people they've turned out to be
00:26:05.760
great assets as well for instance about five houses down there's a guy who is a you know a hangover of
00:26:13.440
the hippie generation he's still got really long hair he looks different kind of scary to some people
00:26:19.600
but actually we've gotten to know him he is a magician he's a wonderful magician he comes to our house
00:26:24.880
a couple times a year still uh for parties he's become a great asset and a lot of neighborhoods
00:26:30.000
have have people like that that they probably don't even know about so the two components are
00:26:35.240
changing the physical facilities and then also getting to know the uh the people in the neighborhood
00:26:41.560
very well and making our kids comfortable with them and getting to know the other kids who live in
00:26:45.140
the neighborhood yeah i think that second component is really important some people might hear like oh i'll
00:26:49.740
make my house a lot of fun but it's not like if you build it they will come right there there also
00:26:54.680
has a cultural change has to occur and that takes a lot of that'll take work and it might take months
00:26:59.840
might even take years for it to take root i i hate to say it it takes years but honestly we've had fun
00:27:06.040
every step of the way and and at this point our kids are very self-managing you know i won't lie
00:27:12.220
there's chaos in our yard quite often but there's hardly ever any real danger and uh our kids can
00:27:19.380
occupy themselves have fun on their own and they also go to other friends houses another component i
00:27:24.300
haven't even talked about is kids being independently mobile we're very big on bikes biking our kids do
00:27:30.400
not get driven to school at all or picked up from school at all they're right they ride their bikes
00:27:34.560
to and from school every day and they're very able as other kids in our neighborhood are very able to
00:27:39.860
go to other kids houses without us hovering over them well let's go to this part about you mentioned
00:27:45.100
that okay it sounds you were listing off all the things you did physically to change your house to
00:27:49.740
make it more inviting for play and you say that's a lot of resources but what i like about the book is
00:27:53.720
you also highlight other neighborhoods and other individuals who they are able to create a
00:27:58.040
neighborhood but maybe didn't have to do what you had to do but they're still able to do it with even
00:28:01.820
limited resources yeah well for instance um the book has a few chapters on other neighborhoods
00:28:07.700
and has a chapter on my neighborhood it also i also have a a two-page spread on an apartment complex
00:28:14.200
and that was actually very easy to write because you know the the apartments are the apartments
00:28:21.680
themselves are are small they don't have air conditioning a couple moms just decided you know
00:28:26.460
stay-at-home moms decided you know we're just going to put a chair out outside every day uh during the
00:28:32.060
summer and we're going to sit around and chat and the kids come out and the mothers really don't have
00:28:38.260
to do much at all they you know someone just bought a tv they put a cardboard box out the kids play with
00:28:42.940
a cardboard box all day you know they they bring out a bunch of a bunch of uh kitchen implements and
00:28:48.460
the kids are you know or have a play kitchen that they've created the amount of effort that parents
00:28:54.320
have to do to to get that play started depends on how much you have inside your house you know because
00:29:01.020
like i said like i said before what we're really trying to do is we're trying to get the neighborhood to
00:29:06.140
to to to be to compete with what the alternatives the kids have and so in a neighborhood where it's
00:29:13.180
just a there's just a courtyard in an apartment complex with small apartments and if they don't
00:29:18.000
have air conditioning especially it's it's very easy to get kids to go outside and play all day
00:29:23.260
there there are other neighborhoods in between my neighborhood which is a nice suburban neighborhood
00:29:28.020
and and that apartment complex very different examples from a really cool hipster neighborhood in
00:29:35.820
portland oregon a new urbanist community in alabama and a very low income street in the south
00:29:43.740
bronx which is generally considered to be one of the one of the most dangerous and and poorest places
00:29:49.260
in the united states that has an amazing play street that happens every day throughout the summer
00:29:55.000
and also in the book you highlight besides making a place a fun place for kids to hang out
00:29:59.960
in addition to that it's that cultural component just being outside all the time with your kids
00:30:04.940
planes okay other families see oh this is something that's normal we can do this too you also highlight
00:30:10.340
other things that families have done to promote that sense of cohesion like just it's like one-time
00:30:15.820
events it could be like a movie night or something like that yeah well i i so i i'm a bit i'm ambivalent
00:30:23.140
about about about the one-time events and let me explain i i think they can be really good and the big
00:30:28.320
thing that we do around here is we have these these block parties uh there's also uh you know uh some
00:30:34.740
neighborhoods will plan a play day for kids um some neighborhoods will will figure out a time just when
00:30:41.180
they can block off their street and it's not a block party but it's just a it's a well the different
00:30:48.360
ways to do that one neighborhood i know uh has done something like i've done they've done a neighborhood
00:30:53.060
summer camp for one week they do one week every every year and so these can be really really good
00:30:58.680
i think that the hesitation i have is that i would say that the event shouldn't be it's not the end
00:31:06.380
in itself it's it's a it what it does is it is it helps you create relationships and help you to start
00:31:15.620
changing culture but that's it just should be a catalyst and the the goal should be play every day
00:31:21.960
or on a regular basis at least a couple times a week and if kids are not in that habit then you
00:31:28.420
know they're going to have other habits they're going to the the big question i have is what do
00:31:33.160
kids choose to do when they have some free time in an afternoon what what does their mind go and i
00:31:39.640
want them to be in the habit of doing things on their own the events can be wonderful my favorite i
00:31:45.280
mentioned the last one i mentioned the neighborhood summer camp can really change the culture of a
00:31:49.800
neighborhood and the cool thing about it is it's it's old school it's just kids from the immediate
00:31:57.720
neighborhood getting together for every day for one week and having a blast the one that i write about
00:32:04.300
in in the book is a neighborhood where it's in palo alto california very close to where i am where
00:32:10.960
they've created a scheme of camp counselors from i think they call them junior counselors you know
00:32:17.460
counselors in training junior counselors senior counselors so they've got every you know throughout
00:32:22.760
the teens they've got all the kids with with different kinds of roles and they end up getting
00:32:27.320
the kids all from from four years old up to 17 and in this neighborhood a couple years i remember asking
00:32:34.900
them well one year i remember of 65 kids who live in that neighborhood they had 61 kids participate
00:32:42.780
and that's all the kids between four and 17 really to have that comprehensive participation means that
00:32:49.600
everybody gets to know each other and so when you're living your everyday life you see people you know you
00:32:55.100
see people you have a warm feeling for and that creates a habit of repeated relationships repeated
00:33:01.540
play dates and and get togethers all year so it's it's really a it's really an example of of a catalyst
00:33:08.580
that actually can have a lasting effect all year well here's another cultural problem that people
00:33:14.620
might run up to or they think exists so i think some people might be listening to this okay that
00:33:18.560
sounds great i'm gonna make my house awesome for kids to you know hang out and play but i'm worried
00:33:24.520
about getting sued if like a kid falls off the roof of a tree house is is that is that a legitimate
00:33:30.380
concern or do you think it's over overblown well i think it's a legitimate concern but i don't think
00:33:37.260
it's it's people should consider it a big enough concern to outweigh the benefit you know there's
00:33:43.140
a lot of legitimate concerns any every time you step in your car and turn on the you know turn on the
00:33:49.000
car and drive away you're decreasing your life expectancy driving is a very dangerous thing but
00:33:55.200
we do it every day because we've decided that the benefits of driving are worth the cost well it's the
00:34:01.280
same thing with inviting kids with a lot of fun play facilities even like a trampoline like we have
00:34:06.960
there's there's there's there's costs there's benefits to doing that i would say a few things
00:34:11.820
about that first of all you can try to mitigate the risks so one of the things we've done is we
00:34:16.360
have a ground level trampoline versus a above ground trampoline you can try to mitigate the risks
00:34:22.440
and you should do that but you can't eliminate risks completely you just can't there's going to be
00:34:28.920
risks in your yard another thing i'll say is that something remarkable happens if you have a real
00:34:35.520
neighborhood environment like we do where kids are coming over on a regular basis you find that that
00:34:41.180
and i this is sounds sarcastic but but everybody kind of thinks when they first have kids that kids
00:34:46.960
are crazy and all they want to do is dangerous things and hurt themselves kids actually don't want
00:34:54.280
to hurt themselves kids actually think about their personal safety if you give them enough time
00:35:00.860
with some situations that are potentially dangerous and they'll and they'll sort of push their limits a
00:35:08.960
little more every time and what you find in our in our yard is the kids become very good at taking risks
00:35:14.100
we have a trampoline and we have kids jumping on it every day here and we've had in 10 years
00:35:19.600
two accidents that required any sort of medical attention both of them were stitches a few stitches in the
00:35:26.360
lip or you know and you know on so elsewhere on the face that's i think a pretty remarkable record
00:35:32.760
given the amount of activity we've had on this trampoline uh but but kids become very good at it
00:35:37.860
and and and pretty much every kid who comes here who comes here for any length of time learns how to do
00:35:43.140
flips front flips back flips they also we also have a two-story playhouse right next to the trampoline
00:35:48.400
they're jumping 10 feet 12 feet down under the under the trampoline they're doing really crazy risky
00:35:53.020
things but they've learned how to take risks and by the way that's an important thing in life
00:35:58.120
because we want our kids to grow up and to try to get a raise to try to get to try to start a new
00:36:04.600
company we want them to take risks in their careers well they're learning how to do that in our yard and
00:36:10.240
they're and they're being very successful at it the last thing i'll say is about this the question of
00:36:16.320
of risk and and being sued is you know another thing we do is i try to get to know other parents
00:36:22.080
and i get to know pretty much all the parents of kids who come here so i think it's less likely
00:36:26.720
you know as i think it's you know becomes less likely because of that that they're going to try
00:36:30.660
to sue me we also you know we try to do things that to mitigate the risk of kids having bad accidents
00:36:36.920
with you know like an in-ground trampoline but we're not going to wipe it out completely so you end up
00:36:41.180
with some probability of of being sued let's compare that to the probability that my kids are
00:36:47.680
going to have a better life that they're going to have more fun that they're going to have a
00:36:50.320
wonderful childhood that's probably 50 60 70 i'll take those odds anytime the probability being sued
00:36:57.780
i don't know it's 0.1 0.01 i don't know what it is the probability of them having a better life
00:37:04.220
is 50 60 70 i'll take those odds anytime and that's what umbrella insurance is for probably right
00:37:09.800
um to be to be totally honest i just don't like the insurance industry i feel like
00:37:16.600
they they they have a way of getting out of of of paying up in a lot of circumstances
00:37:23.900
i don't know exactly what my insurance covers i have insurance i have umbrella insurance
00:37:28.340
but i'm not counting on it i'm just counting on you know i'm betting the odds that things are going
00:37:34.180
to work out and you know that's life i mean if if you're really that afraid you really shouldn't
00:37:39.020
be driving your car right right and speaking of that idea of risk i mean another reason my
00:37:43.680
kids aren't playing outside is that parents are afraid that their kids are going to get abducted
00:37:48.260
right we've had lenore skinese on the podcast to talk about this um and again that's like it's it's
00:37:53.520
like it's a it's overblown right it's not that big of a risk it's okay your kid is like more
00:37:58.480
likely to get struck by lightning than get abducted by a stranger yeah i mean lenore that's that's her
00:38:05.140
that's her shtick is is is breaking that down and breaking that that that fear down and and and
00:38:11.720
really uh getting people to to to not rate it so highly in their mind they definitely over rate the
00:38:21.420
possibility of that happening it's the probability is not zero the probability exists but it's really low
00:38:28.340
and i think what i think really honestly i think that the biggest problem is not that people are
00:38:35.580
fearful but that they actually don't they can't imagine that their kids could have so much fun
00:38:41.300
so uh what i found is is parents that have various hesitations they want their kids to be in
00:38:47.660
activities all the time or they want their they're afraid their kids are going to get abducted they bring
00:38:51.740
their kids over our yard and they're just amazed at the joy that kids have and and really playing
00:38:58.560
with abandon that they a lot of kids just don't have in their lives today and parents need to
00:39:03.240
experience that and i think i think that will really wither away the the hesitations that people have
00:39:09.200
that seem irrational so when i was a kid one of the things that we did was play capture the flag at
00:39:14.880
night and that involved you know it was like all the neighbor kids in the street and like we would be
00:39:19.760
hiding in neighbor neighbors you know garden beds on the side of their house in their backyard like
00:39:25.740
jumping over fences and like the parents didn't like no one cared because like all the parents
00:39:30.000
like those were those were their neighbor kids houses right yeah so there was a buy and the parents
00:39:34.040
didn't care i imagine that happened today like there'd be people on the next door app right
00:39:39.640
complaining about there's kids jumping my fence how do you my question i guess my question i'm going
00:39:45.260
in there with this like how do you get buy-in from neighbors who don't have kids right and it sounds
00:39:51.100
like it's not that big of a problem because you mentioned the magician guy is that a issue where
00:39:55.120
you know creating a neighborhood where you have neighbors who don't have kids they're just like
00:39:58.320
i don't want that it's too much ruckus too much noise well i'll say this so so so the generally
00:40:04.360
speaking about i want to make a comment about about the neighbor reaction so you know just like a lot
00:40:10.580
of things in life there's this there's kind of a bell curve distribution we have on the one end
00:40:14.320
people who are the least enthusiastic and the other end we have people who are the most enthusiastic
00:40:18.760
in the middle are people who you know they kind of like it they think it's pretty cool but it's not
00:40:23.080
going to you know it's not going to change their lives in any major measurable way but the the far
00:40:28.680
the first end of people who aren't enthusiastic for the most part they're not against us they're not
00:40:35.060
antagonistic to what we're doing it's that we just don't have any impact on our life at all
00:40:40.260
they would they just sort of they they blow by us they don't think about us we're just these weird
00:40:45.080
people who are doing something different we don't really upset them i do have one neighbor who an
00:40:50.800
older woman um and and who lives with her husband uh they're i guess in the early 70s i would say
00:40:56.980
she's a very nice person uh nice to talk to and she came up to me and she said she basically said
00:41:03.700
she doesn't think our kids should be playing on the street riding their bikes riding their scooters
00:41:08.740
and we live on a street that's very calm i've actually because i'm a geek about kids play and
00:41:15.660
i've written this book i i actually have spent time counting cars and you know ends up being about
00:41:22.980
one car every couple minutes which isn't bad you know one car every two minutes three minutes
00:41:28.520
something like that but she just thinks kids should not be on the street and i i i try to listen to her
00:41:37.760
and i said well i'll do this for you i will i or some other adult will be on the sidewalk
00:41:44.120
keeping an eye on our kids when they're in the street but i'm not going to tell our kids they
00:41:48.900
can't go on the street and and quite honestly i feel like the street is as much our kids as any car
00:41:55.320
that goes by it's it's all our it's it's everybody's property it's not the it's not the uh sole
00:42:01.720
domain of of any car that wants to pass by and she just she wasn't happy about that and we're not
00:42:07.500
real friendly these days you know i feel a bit bad about that but i'm just not going to give up
00:42:12.620
i'm not going to tell my kids they can't play in the street i think that it's uh if you really stop
00:42:17.540
and think about it why is it that you know that some people think that cars have total car
00:42:23.760
blanche do whatever they want on streets no matter what street it is you know if it's if it's an
00:42:27.560
interstate highway i get it but a street that gets a car every three or four minutes you know
00:42:33.300
i think kids have as much right to it as cars do yeah man if that was if i couldn't play in the
00:42:40.100
street when i was a kid like there'd be no street hockey there wouldn't have been any baseball games
00:42:43.840
because that's where we played yeah yeah the street and like it wasn't that big of a deal as soon as
00:42:47.880
the you know the car came you said game off like on wayne's world went to the side car passed and you
00:42:53.240
got and you went back to play it was not a big deal yeah yeah and and i'll tell you to be honest
00:42:57.500
some people neighbors might not like this but but um there was a my kids have on and off played
00:43:03.640
street hockey in the street in front of our house for for years and they're not doing it right now
00:43:08.140
but they'll probably they'll probably start this fall again there was a time we were playing a lot
00:43:12.380
and we put the goals right in the middle of the street and when a car would come i did not run
00:43:21.740
really fast to grab the goal i take my good old sweet time and i grabbed that goal and i nice and
00:43:28.840
easy walk you know pull that goal off to the side i made the made the driver know that you know this is
00:43:36.520
not a great street to pass through and and uh you know that's that's the kind of thing that my
00:43:42.480
my friends and i did we we didn't like cars passing through we felt we like you know we didn't feel
00:43:47.820
like we own the street but we felt like hey you know the this is this is our place and uh maybe
00:43:54.320
you might want to take another route the next time you you think about driving through a neighborhood
00:43:57.540
and to this point of you know having these difficult conversations like that's part of
00:44:01.020
being in a community oftentimes when people think about a community they always think of the happy
00:44:04.320
stuff like the the day camp that mom's put on and it's great but like the other part of being a
00:44:08.800
community is it takes work and it requires having those difficult conversations and it might mean
00:44:12.840
like you're not friendly with some people but it's something you got to do if you want to have that
00:44:17.340
that larger goal you're aiming for yeah yeah i'm it's obvious in life you don't you don't always
00:44:24.580
need to capitulate to someone else's demands i think it's important that you you listen to someone
00:44:29.480
you you try to you know meet them part way but you know i i have this fundamental belief that that
00:44:37.160
streets are not just for cars especially like i said streets where there's not a lot of traffic
00:44:42.500
and you know i'm very happy to say that that our kids feel totally comfortable in our yard in the
00:44:49.060
street going to other people's houses it's a place where it's their domain it's a place that they
00:44:54.580
could they feel very comfortable doing anything they want so mike i wonder if you have any advice
00:44:59.240
to say that there's one thing that someone can start doing today a parent who's listening to the
00:45:02.760
show that they can start making a playbook happen in their neck of the woods what would you say that
00:45:05.720
one thing could be like the step in action they can take right now well i i i like to use the
00:45:11.340
adage that is often attributed to to woody allen uh i think he i read that he said someone else said
00:45:19.200
it first but uh he's often quoted as saying 80 of life is showing up and there's there's different
00:45:25.180
ways to interpret that but the way i like to interpret it for this in this context is you know
00:45:29.940
show up in your neighborhood where do you show up as parents do you show up in front of the television
00:45:35.580
instead every day after dinner are you you know working after dinner uh going off into your study
00:45:41.720
if you show up in your neighborhood with your kids out front if you're walking and biking to nearby
00:45:50.120
places like the grocery store or or to the park rather than driving if you're showing up at neighbor's
00:45:56.320
houses knocking on the door chatting with them then kids your kids will will definitely get the sense that
00:46:02.280
that this is normal this is the this is a place that is is worthy of my parents attention and this
00:46:08.340
is worthy of my attention as well uh so i say show up in your neighborhood as often as you can
00:46:13.620
awesome well mike is there some place people can go to learn more about the book in your work
00:46:16.660
well there's the book uh playboyhood available on amazon.com the the website i haven't been blogging
00:46:23.500
for the past couple of years but there's a bunch of just there's a couple hundred blog articles
00:46:27.340
on playboyhood.com by the way there's well i guess it's not so easy to find but there's lots of
00:46:32.600
disciples of playboyhood lots of instances of people trying to create playboyhoods throughout
00:46:37.500
the united states and in the book there's examples of other neighborhoods we just touched on briefly
00:46:42.340
each of those is really fascinating in its own right for instance i mentioned this place in in
00:46:48.080
portland oregon called share it square and it's part of a city repair movement that's one of
00:46:53.240
many examples that are just fascinating for different ideas different approaches to how to
00:46:58.420
create a great place for play for kids awesome well mike lanza thanks for your time it's been a pleasure
00:47:03.280
thank you so much my guest name is mike lanza he's the author of the book playboyhood it's available
00:47:08.420
on amazon.com you can also find out more information about his work at his website
00:47:11.940
playboyhood.com also check out our show notes at aom.is slash playboyhood
00:47:17.060
well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website at artofmanliness.com
00:47:29.020
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00:48:06.100
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