Parents weigh the values of long, hot days roaming the streets against the risks posed by the coronavirus
Children play in water fountains at the Place des Arts in Montreal, in this file photo from July 3, 2018.Heather Dixon’s breaking point came on the day she found out there wouldn’t be camps this summer.
“The one thing that kids haven’t had in the last generation or two is unstructured, preferably unsupervised time,” says Lenore Skenazy, founder of the Free-Range Kids movement, which advocates for children to have more independence with limited parental supervision. In 1976, there were nearly 1.5 million families in Canada with a stay-at-home parent. By 2015, that number had dropped to less than half a million, according to Statistics Canada.However, the pandemic has disrupted much of what has been stopping parents from giving their kids the sort of freedom they had growing up.
Her daughter’s friends are getting together at pools, but Ms. Nayyar, who lives in Toronto, isn’t comfortable allowing her to go.Ms. Nayyar is instead trying to give her kids more freedom by allowing them to schedule their own days, although they cannot play with friends unattended. “I was really motivated to get him away from screens,” says Mr. Norman, a financial planner. “I wanted to try and give him a little more space and independence so he could do that.”Mike Armstrong has begun allowing his 10-year-old son go to the school near their home Hamilton and play baseball with friends.
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