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When we put on our rose tinted spectacles and look back on our childhoods, or perhaps imagine the childhoods we hoped our kids might have, what do we see? Hours roaming the woods, building dens. Sunny days spent hauling bikes over gates and through fields. Nettles stinging knees as dusty legs scramble down to babbling streams, in search of minnows to net, or pools to cool off in. Bikes tucked behind walls as their owners whack through undergrowth in search of secret hideouts. Tree houses, hay bales, long grass adventures, melted chocolate biscuits, lashings of ginger beer.
Away from the bucolic idyll of the countryside, perhaps there is a similar but more urban version. Decaying buildings explored, snickets and alleyways linked together, dens and hideouts in the overgrown strips between fences. Maybe a spot of furtive sneaking behind some hoardings on a long forgotten brownfield site. Jumpers for goal posts. Scrap ply for jumps.
Children and teenagers have traditionally roamed and explored with little regard to permitted routes or lines on maps. Squeezing through gaps in hedges and fences, climbing up trees, balancing along walls. Squint through your rose tinted specs, and I don’t think you’ll see those scabbed kneed explorers poring over a map, wondering where the designated footpaths lie. If there is a map, it surely only leads to imaginary treasure, dragons, and piranha infested waters.
As kids, we had little awareness of access rules, or private property, or trespass, beyond the consequences of getting shouted at by an adult, or returning to your den to discover someone had trashed your previous hard work. Official looking signs were mostly for ignoring. We followed our own code of behaviour that usually meant that our presence would be tolerated – or even undiscovered. We knew to climb gates at the hinges so as not to damage them, and to close the ones we opened. We figured out where you could get away with play, and where you couldn’t. Sometimes we got it wrong – stern words would be dished out, apologies required – but through the process we learnt how to read the signs – literally and metaphorically.
And then, I look at my own kids. They’re quite free range by the standards of many modern children, yet even they lack much of this accumulated knowledge of roaming. In keeping them ‘safe’, I’ve removed their chances of establishing the experience needed to make judgements about what they should do. I’ve created sign followers, not wanderers. Their choices are spelled out for them – left or right, blue or red – and uncertainty can be dealt with by a call home, or a quick tap of a navigation app on phone.
In this certainty, this safety net version of exploration, I think they’re missing out. They’re missing out on a whole pile of secret thrill and breathless adventure, and that’s a bit sad for them. But there’s a bigger picture too. In the quest to broaden access rights, I wonder if the internet generations will understand why the rest of us are so bothered? If they’re so used to following GPS route guides, heading for the Instagram selfie spot, checking where this path joins the next one, will they see the point in being able to step off the plotted line and into the unknown? I rather hope my kids will ignore a few instructions and get out there.
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