The endangered wild child

By Felix Carroll

If you’re lucky, sometimes, you can spot them, moving in flocks, sizing up drainage culverts, flicking off each others’ baseball caps. Sometimes you can only hear them – their distinctive call, like rabid chipmunks being pinned down and tickled. Sometimes you see merely signs of their activity: maybe a wad of used gum, a homemade bow and arrow, a mud ball hardening in the heat.

Though no hard statistics exist, it is believed only a handful of these creatures remains. I am referring, of course, to children in their natural habitat, children who have not been herded up, given jerseys with numbers, and called “off sides” by scary adults in zebra stripes.

I can no longer just sit back and do nothing. Hear me out.

I was inspired recently when I came across children in my hometown in western Massachusetts playing baseball with no adult supervision. I checked my field guide to identify this activity. Anthropologists refer to it pick-up games (Latin, I think, for “leave us alone”).

I am told we are blessed here in these semi-rural regions, that the ability to form pick-up games hasn’t entirely been bred out of all of our children as it has in children elsewhere. I did a little research on this. Amazing to think that, historically, worldwide, childhood — in its natural state — had one of the largest ranges of all mammals, second only to adults. However, in North America, childhood, much like the wolf population, has been largely extirpated, leaving it, sadly, to forage for fun in food courts, the Internet, and Chuck E. Cheeses.

Which brings me to my proposal. Let’s make it official: Let’s establish the first of hopefully many National Natural Childhood Sanctuary, right here where I live. You know, protect what we have.

There’s a movement afoot to support such a proposal. As an article in The New York Times Magazine on May 31 titled “Let the Kid Be” pointed out, many parents are now seeking an about-face on micromanaging their offspring. Indeed, you could fill a shelf with the number of freshly minted books out that call for an end to the age of the so-called helicopter parent, most notably Tom Hodgkinson’s “The Idle Parent: Why Less Means More When Raising Kids.”

I’ve done my own research on the topic and, apparently, childhood is native to my own region. Just as James Audubon illustrated birds he encountered, such as the Carolina parakeet (now extinct), we here in Stockbridge, Mass., had Norman Rockwell, whose illustrations depict what has now become rare or endangered childhood. A quick review of his work provides proof to the nation that children once flourished and had an innate ability to create fun all on their own and even engage in conflict resolutions (though they may stick their tongues out at each other and call each other “poopy face”).

The time is ripe for this. Every year as summer break approaches a flurry of news accounts informs us of how modern American childhood is now heavily managed and spent mainly indoors. For instance, in a usual week, 27 percent of children ages 9 to 13 play organized baseball, but only 6 percent play on their own, a survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded.

We know it from experience that we painstakingly plan their lives from their first play date to their first day of college. We shuttle them from soccer practice, to clarinet lessons, to karate. We inflate their egos. We give them graduation ceremonies even when it's just from preschool. We give them a trophy at the end of the season even when they lose.

Anyway, back to my proposal.

While elsewhere in the U.S., habitat destruction has drastically reduced childhood’s range, we in the rural remnants still have what scientists say is childhood’s natural habitat. That includes coniferous and deciduous forests, mountains, swamps, streams, vacant lots, train trestles, and the occasional structurally sound abandoned warehouse.

As it is with apex predators, such as wolves, the state of the land itself is a good indicator of the state of childhood, and vice versa. This explains why childhood in suburban-clogged areas of North America has frequently run into conflicts with so many different interests — including developers, overzealous cops, proponents of SAT prep classes, and the owners of the Discovery Zone chain of indoor fun centers.

Everyone always talks about protecting children, but no one talks about protecting childhood. We could burnish our progressive credentials and show the nation that humans and childhood can co-exist. And who knows, by declaring protected childhood sanctuaries where a kid can be a kid, childhood may well expand its territory.

I can envision a day when unorganized sporting leagues will turn up in such far flung places as (dare I dream) Scarsdale! Parents everywhere will tell their children to disappear and come back just before the streetlights come on. Those kids I saw in my hometown will go on speaking tours showing off their skinned knees.

But let’s not be reckless, especially in towns where childhood is being reintroduced. We’ll have to make sure the whole thing doesn’t turn into The Lord of the Flies. It could take some extensive parental monitoring. Did I really just say “extensive parental monitoring”? I can’t believe I just said that.