Do children play outside where you live?

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I am curious because it is a problem where we live. Our seven year old daughter has no playmates in our neighborhood. Most of the girls from her school have arranged play dates.
It seems our daughter expects to go places, such as a museum, instead of playing outside.

Please add your city/state when posting your comment. I am curious to see how things are in other parts of the country. We live in Utah.

Thanks! 🙂
 
I live just to the West of London, and yes the kids around our street play outside, usually cricket (its mainly Indian and Pakistani kids on our street and they do like their cricket) across the street, so I need to drive slowly and carefully turning the corner in our close. It gets a bit noisy with them in the Summer, but at least its a lot better than them sitting indoors playing computer games.
 
lax16 said:
I am curious because it is a problem where we live. Our seven year old daughter has no playmates in our neighborhood. Most of the girls from her school have arranged play dates.
It seems our daughter expects to go places, such as a museum, instead of playing outside.

Please add your city/state when posting your comment. I am curious to see how things are in other parts of the country. We live in Utah.

Thanks! 🙂
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American midwest here. I see a few kids outside in summer, but not many. Certainly none on my street. Most would rather go someplace or simply stay inside.
 
On Long Island, in NY where I live in a very nice neighborhood our children do three things. They play outside , have arranged play dates at each other’s homes and they are taken to various amusements places .
 
lax16 said:
I am curious because it is a problem where we live. Our seven year old daughter has no playmates in our neighborhood. Most of the girls from her school have arranged play dates.
It seems our daughter expects to go places, such as a museum, instead of playing outside.

Please add your city/state when posting your comment. I am curious to see how things are in other parts of the country. We live in Utah.

Thanks! 🙂
Click to expand...
I live in suburban southern California.

Kids do play outside where I live— when they are at home. In my area it is typical for both parents to work so kids are at school, daycare, or summer camp. And at the moment my neighborhood seems to have mostly empty-nesters, families with community college students, or families with infants.
 
Rochester Hills (metro Detroit) Michigan

He plays outside once in awhile, but he initiates it if he seems other kids on our street are out playing too. He’s an only child and doesn’t want to play alone (and mom doesn’t always want to be his playmate).

A LOT of the kids in our neighborhood have very structured schedules, so it’s hard to find kids just playing outside. There was one kid near me who I never saw outside. I’d see him in the morning when dad dropped him off at the bus and when the kid got out of the car in the afternoon.

I have a mom’s group and we do some playdates or I meet up with other moms I know and do playdates. Sometimes, I end up running into other moms I know at the gym or library when we are out and about. Yesterday, a bunch of us went to a splash pad in the area. This summer, I have him in T-ball and gymnastics and it seems like all the moms I know have their kids in some sort of class or camp. It’s packed w/kids when we go to the swimming pool at the gym. Also, we go to the different parks around town a lot. However, most the time, we just do playdates at each others’ homes. They may or may not get outside depending on the activities going on that day. We don’t necessarily go to a museum, pool or movie (or whatever).

I try to get my kid outside, even if it’s just me and him running errands. I’ve also noticed this as a problem during the school year. In our neighborhood, a lot of the kids who go outside are a lot older than my son, so it’s not like 14-15 year old will want to play with a kindergartner for very long.

A lot depends on the weather too. If it’s too hot or cold, then we do more indoor activities.
 
I live in a suburban area in Texas. All of our neighbors have kids, and they sometimes play in fenced-in backyards. Parents take them to nearby parks on weekends.

It gets so hot here during the summer than most people go to indoor places (malls, indoor bounce house places, etc.) to escape the heat.

My wife takes our kids to the park every morning for a couple hours. On weekends we take them to the park as well. They get bored quickly if they have to stay in the backyard of our home.
 
Yes they do. All day and all night. About this time of year they start in with the TP. Some of the older kids get into spray paint and breaking car windows.
 
PS- Why don’t you want to take her to a museum? I would milk that while it lasts!
 
Northern California…yes, I sent my children outside to play when they were young and (years later) I now send my grandchildren outside…
 
Columbus Ohio area–my grandchildren, when not at swim practice or meets are outside a lot. There are a lot of neighborhood kids who play outside. My daughter doesn’t want them in the house when the weather is nice.

When my children were small in nice weather, they left the house in the morning, came back to eat lunch and supper or to go to the bathroom and get a drink, and they were off again until dark. In the winter they played in the snow, but spent more time indoors.
 
In my dad they all did but that was 30 years back. Now days I notice in my area they don’t and it’s considered to dangerous to have your kids out of site. There was a girl a decade back who was kidnapped in a rural area when her mom got mad at her and told to to walk the rest of the way home (apparently she was having a temper tantrum) she was around 11-13 I believe she disappeared and after a decade there’s never been a trace of her. Then there the case of Sean Hornbeck who was kept prisoner at an apartment complex I used to ride past all the time on my bike. He was kidnapped and held for several years…a more recent case a little girl was kidnapped by a man she and her mother met a Walmart. He said he would take the girl to McDonalds for a mean and instead took her on a trip and murdered her. The body was found the next day. Nope if I had kids in this day and age I wouldn’t let them play out of my site either. Way too dangerous out there.
 
Northern New Jersey (metro New York area). Yes, in large numbers. Usually in parks.
 
Suburban Houston

yes, I see kids outside, but not a ton. I think there’s three families with kids on my street. One I see outside sometimes. The other two never. I see kids at the little playground in our neighborhood and the splashpad. Honestly it’s too hot to play outside a lot of the time here.
 
We have many children in our apartment complex and they spend the day riding their bikes around the parking lot or playing out at the small playground that we have. However, I have three nephews and nieces who prefer to stay inside on their video games! :confused:
 
I’m originally from a small town in Alabama. Yes, kids still play outside. I have cousins who are still in elementary school and you have to threaten them to make them come inside for supper.
I live in Florida right now. I live in an apartment and kids are always out riding their bikes, at the pool, or at the playground.
 
I’m in Taylor, MI (Downriver area, just outside Detroit).

We live on a cul-de-sac street with 12 houses. There are a total of 15 kids on the street from 17 on down to 5. We also happen to be directly behind the elementary school with it’s large playscapes. As you can imagine, we have tons of kids outside from early morning til streetlights come on.
 
MJJean said:
I’m in Taylor, MI (Downriver area, just outside Detroit).

We live on a cul-de-sac street with 12 houses. There are a total of 15 kids on the street from 17 on down to 5. We also happen to be directly behind the elementary school with it’s large playscapes. As you can imagine, we have tons of kids outside from early morning til streetlights come on.
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I like that word, “playscapes.” May I use it?
 
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