Angela J. Hanscom

Having already read work by Richard Louve, Katy Bowman, John Ratey and Peter Gray this was more of a summary of information I had already been exposed to, rather than anything new or surprising. The biggest takeaway being that 4 - 8 hours a day of outdoor/physically active time is ideal --physically and psychologically for people of ALL ages (even infants), in big ways (ie cardiovascular fitness) and small ways (ie eye and vestibular function). This is extremely counter-cultural, and thus seems impossible on a regular basis, especially among school age and older people. But it is good to get these ideas out there and hopefully we can make a cultural shift.… (mais)

Finally finished it! I read every word (mostly), which is different for NF for me. Let me just state that I think Occupational Therapy is amazingly awesome and that I am a proud practitioner of said awesomeness.

Is this the best how-to book, probably not. But as the foundation, the reason why we need this for our children, as a jumping point, the book is very good. I am especially excited about the recommended readings and references--very thorough.

Take home point: kids need to be outside, as much as possible; without devices, minimal supervision. Free to explore, try things, figure stuff out, get out energy, get in energy, to relax/refocus/energize, to be independent. Hanscom offers us many baby steps to get partially to that level that we were about 30-40 years ago--riding bikes to friends houses, playing outside most of the day, talking to ourselves, building forts, etc. But in this big scary world, it isn't easy as a parent to trust that everything is going to be okay. Trust me, as a person who knows the benefits of kids being outside, paired with the parent who hears horrible stories on the news about what can happen to children, I have been there, totally. It is good stuff, sometimes scary, but our kids need this.… (mais)

Richard Louv's book "Last Child in the Woods" made the case that the outdoors is good for you. Angela Hanson, an occupational therapist, makes the case that we injure and maybe even disable children when we have them spend so much time indoors, on "safe" play equipment, and in supervised pay.

We even need new terminology to describe this. Container Baby Syndrome (CBS) describes the problems caused by spending too much time in "baby containers", like child seats, walkers, strollers, and so on. These "safe" containers cause flat spots on heads, poor visual/body coordination, low strength, poor vestibular development, poor balance, and more.

She tested three classrooms of fifth-graders who had trouble paying attention. They fidgeted, even fell out of their chairs. She tested core strength and balance skills, simple things like spinning in a circle ten times with eyes open, then closed. Compared to the average for children from 1984, only one out of twelve children could meet the expected level! [pages 47 and 48]… (mais)