Parenting in the year 2010

My friend Lucy recently sent me an email entitled TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !! While it's long, I want to share a few quotes here:

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

I'm not one to want to turn back the hands of time - because, really I like my smart phone and the past came with its share of problems - but I do wax nostalgic for the memories of riding the bus at age 6 with my friend to ballet class with no parents along for the ride or spending summer days across various backyards adjacent to mine to live out adventures in tree houses and forts, returning only to check in for lunch and returning at dusk in time for dinner at age 8.

Living in urban San Diego in the year 2010, children at age 6 don't take the bus by themselves and most of our friends are accessible by freeway rather than across backyards. So how do we, as urban parents, raise creative, adventurous kids in the year 2010? That's what this blog is all about. Along with generating kid and family friendly ideas, I hope that this blog will also lead to good discussions about how we bring more fun into our family's lives.