← Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark
Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark
How To Get Kids Playing Outside | Playborhood Author Mike Lanza
00:56:11
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- [00:00]
Mike Lanza
Walking on the street, going to their friend's house is dangerous. But heck, I mean, I guess if you don't want kids to have any danger, they should stay in bed all day.
- [00:07]
Alex Clark
I do think a lot of them are saying things like go outside and play. But then their kids go out for five minutes and they come back in and say, I'm bored.
- [00:14]
Mike Lanza
It's because their neighborhoods are boring. I spent two years looking. I couldn't find any neighborhood where kids were outside having fun. We made a very conscious decision. We were going to invest all of our money and all our time into making our yard into the most fun place we could.
- [00:51]
Alex Clark
I have a question for you and when you answer, you should really write it out on a note on your phone or piece of paper and then tag me on Instagram so I can see. What are 10 of the best moments of your childhood before high school? What do they all have in common? Were they scheduled play or unscheduled? Were there adults around indoors or outdoors? If you've ever caught yourself saying I just want my kid to have the kind of childhood I had, then this episode's for you. Mike Lanza is a dad who looked around one day and realized something heartbreaking. Kids don't roam neighborhoods anymore. No one's riding bikes until the street lights come come on. No one's knocking on doors to see if so and so can come out and play. Childhood the way we remember it is quietly disappearing. And he said, yeah, not on my watch. So Mike and his wife did something really radical. They turned their home into a full blown kid magnet. I'm talking bikes, chalk climbing walls, water features, the works. No screens, no schedules, just real messy magical play. And guess what? The neighborhood kids came, they stayed, and something beautiful started to community. So Mike wrote the book Playborhood to help other parents do the exact same thing. To reclaim childhood and rewire neighborhoods back to what they were always meant to be. Places where kids are free to roam, explore and actually live. In this episode we're talking about why unsupervised, unstructured play is actually the healthiest kind. How to rebuild a community in a culture obsessed with fear and control and what it takes to raise bold, curious kids in in today's world. Watch this episode by subscribing to Real Alex Clark on YouTube and culture Pothecary on Spotify, which now offers video. Join the Cute Servatives Facebook group. You'll meet like minded women in your area who are also fans of the show. We are donor funded. You may not Know that you can leave a tax deductible donation through the link in the show notes to support what we do to heal a sick culture, Please welcome author of Playborhood dad and front yard freedom fighter Mike Lanza to culture Apothecary. When did go outside and play suddenly become a radical parenting of?
- [02:51]
Mike Lanza
Well, it's taken a few decades, and I can't say exactly when, but I know between the time I was a kid, which was the, say, 60s, 70s, and when I started raising kids in the 2000s, things changed radically. And I didn't recognize the childhood that I saw, the childhood that I had. We had almost nothing going on inside our house. We. We had three channels of television. A lot of times there was really nothing to watch. And so we would just go outside and we'd have these scenes where we just look at each other and say, well, what do you want to do? I don't know. What do you want to do? And we'd stand there and then we'd. We'd invent something, we'd make something up, we'd create some game. It was a very kind of open, free world that we had when I was growing up.
- [03:41]
Alex Clark
And I mean, to give parents the benefit of the doubt, I do think a lot of them are saying things like, go outside and play, but then their kids go out for five minutes and they come back in and say, I'm bored.
- [03:51]
Mike Lanza
Absolutely. I mean, the thing is that, that any rational kid, I mean, if you think about it, I could turn on, I. I could turn on my video game console immediately. I get gratification. I could open my iPad, I've got the game sitting right there. Or I can, I. Can you go on social media, I can turn on the television, I get immediate gratification. What are the chances that when a kid goes outside today, there's something going on? Probably close to 0%, you know, maybe 5%. It's not worth it. It's not worth trying. I would say it's because their neighborhoods are boring. And so a lot of what I talk about in Playborhood is trying to make neighborhoods into a really compelling place to be so the kids will want to be outside. And I've seen it in my neighborhood. We, we. We've made it happen. And I've seen it. A lot of neighborhoods I write about.
- [04:38]
Alex Clark
As well, and that started with your kids being very little to now being teenagers and then even young adults. And your yard, despite your kids being older, is for new families and people in the neighborhood that are sending their Kids to you to play outside. And so kids are still playing outside in your neighborhood because you kind of built this establishment of like, we're gonna keep doing this.
- [05:00]
Mike Lanza
Yeah, it's a. It's a hangout. And. And our yard is really a hangout. And that's something that we did very consciously, putting a lot of really fun, interesting facilities, equipment in our yard, trying to understand, and I think succeeding in understanding how kid. What kids want to do. And we've created what sociologists call a third place. We. There's this theory in sociology, this guy named Ray Oldenberg wrote about this, that human beings have three different places in their lives that are important for their social life. One is their home. That's where their family is. Another is their workplace or their school. But then there's this third place. The third place is a place that you just show up and you see people you know, and you hang out with them. It's like the Cheers bar. And that's what our. Our yard has become. In our neighborhood. Most kids don't have a physical third place. I'd say 98% of kids, 95% of kids don't have a physical third place. So where do they go? They go to the online third place. They go to Instagram. They go to Snapchat. They go to these social media places. I think that's sad.
- [06:07]
Alex Clark
Do you think that modern parents are unintentionally robbing their kids of independence?
- [06:13]
Mike Lanza
I don't think that any individual parent is doing anything wrong. I think the problem is that we have a collective problem. We have kind of a. I studied economics in college, so. So we have something kind of like a network effect where an individual parent, if they tell their kid, go outside and play, they think that, you know, maybe they think they're doing something good, but actually it fails because there's no one else out there. So somehow as collectively we have to figure out how to change the culture of neighborhoods so that kids will want to go outside, kids will want to have fun outside, and they'll think, oh, maybe I'll go outside and see what's going on. Because there's a decent chance something's going on rather than always going to the iPad.
- [06:55]
Alex Clark
And that really takes parents stepping up and saying, okay, we're going to do something about this issue. Like, it can't. Because I think a lot of them are saying, like, go find a kid. Ask them to do something with you. See if they want to go ride bikes. But then what you're saying is, like, there's a very low chance that there is even going to be another kid out there to talk to.
- [07:12]
Mike Lanza
Absolutely. And, and so things like I'm a big advocate of parents walking with their kids, riding bikes with their kids, and by the way, I got my kids to ride when they were 3, 4 years old because I'm really into it, but also because I think it's really, really important. So if you can somehow possibly walk around to the grocery store, it might take five or ten extra minutes, but it's really good for your kids. You know, if you drive, the kids are in that car seat, they're restrained, they can't do anything, they can't see anything. And it's the most dangerous time they'll spend all day. If you walk, you get to see the neighbors, you get to see the neighbor's dog, you get to start spontaneous conversations with people. And a funny thing interesting thing is if you don't know your neighbors, I, I, I challenge you people to do this experiment. Let's say you don't know your neighbors. You have a certain idea of how dangerous you think your neighborhood is if you actually go out and aggressively walk and walk with your kids, say hello to neighbors. All of a sudden you think that the neighborhood is a lot more safe. And the neighborhood hasn't changed, nothing's changed. It's just this familiarity. And same for our kids. They'll feel more comfortable if they're out there and if they see people, if they see us parents interacting, if they see us talking to the kids, if, if my kids meet their kids, all of a sudden it becomes a much more comfortable place.
- [08:36]
Alex Clark
What moment made you say, screw it, I'm going to build a playborhood.
- [08:39]
Mike Lanza
Yeah, well, it happened when, before actually when my wife was pregnant with our first son. And you know, I had up until then been a single guy in San Francisco. My wife was single. We got married and, and we had this single life and we didn't really know what kids lives were like. So I thought, okay, we're pregnant, we're going to have a kid. I got to start asking my friends and paying attention. And I saw this. There's one moment when my friend John was having an argument with his son, who was about 10 at the time. And they were having what I thought was an absurd argument about scheduling. I want to have a play date at 10 with this kid on Saturday. No, you can't do it because you got soccer practice. How about this? No, I got piano lessons at this time. No, how about this? Oh, I have another Playdate. It was horrible. They were just going back and forth. It just didn't sound like any fun at all. And I turned to my friend and I said, can you just go out and play? And my friend said, no, kids don't do that anymore. I thought, oh, my. You know, so I'm. I'm an entrepreneur. I start companies and run companies. And for me, I just said, I'm not raising my kid that way.
- [09:46]
Alex Clark
Yeah, screw it.
- [09:48]
Mike Lanza
And so from that point, I just said, well, I'm going to make a difference. I'm going to do something different for my kids. In the beginning, I thought, all I have to do is buy a house in the right neighborhood. And I looked and I looked. I spent two years looking. I couldn't find any neighborhood where kids were outside having fun.
- [10:03]
Alex Clark
And this is the early 2000s.
- [10:05]
Mike Lanza
Early 2000s. Yeah. And so what I decided was, well, if I can't find the neighborhood where it's happening, maybe I'll find a neighborhood that has the bones. So it has little kids, it has walkable streets, it has walkable destinations. A neighborhood school where you can walk or ride bikes, too. And that's what we did. And then we made it happen.
- [10:25]
Alex Clark
And what exactly did you make happen? Like, what started going on in your yard?
- [10:30]
Mike Lanza
We made a very conscious decision. We weren't really going to buy furniture for our house. We had some, you know, from our single days, but, um. But we weren't really going to buy furniture for the house inside. We were going to invest all of our money and all our time into making our yard into the most fun place we could. I really looked at every square foot of our yard, and I thought, how can I make this, this part of our yard, fun for kids? What. What different things could we add? And we. We put stuff all over the place because, you know, part of the theory here is in order to draw kids from inside to out, you have to make something really, really compelling for them. Really, really fun. If you just, you know, buy the little, you know, little tight, tight slide or something like that, they might like it for a few hours or maybe a day or two. But we're talking about critical mass, where kids are showing up on a daily basis. And that's where we are today. We have kids coming over every day, playing. A lot of times we don't even know who they are.
- [11:29]
Alex Clark
Yeah, so tell us about, like, some of the things that you built.
- [11:33]
Mike Lanza
There's a front yard and a backyard, by the way, where. Where I live in Northern California, all yards are fenced in. And in the beginning when I was thinking about this, I thought, well, I don't want to have kids come to my backyard because that's kind of a fenced in prison and you know, you can't see from other yards. I was raised in a place where we didn't have fences and you could play games between different yards. You know, stuff like that. Play, play a, you know, tag and stuff like that. Anyway, we have fences, so I did everything in the front yard. In the front yard we have a lot of public art. We have two mosaics on, on our fence that are really important to us that have a lot of meaning. I wish you could see the visuals. We have a big mural painted on our driveway of our neighborhood. It's a map of our whole neighborhood. And I drew in all of the lot lines for all of the different houses in our neighborhood in this map. And the kids used to. My kids are older now, but they, they used to build Legos and, and put Legos houses on the different. Lots of people's houses.
- [12:38]
Alex Clark
Oh yeah. So little kids, especially little boys would love this because you can go to this little map on the driveway and find your house.
- [12:43]
Mike Lanza
Yeah.
- [12:43]
Alex Clark
And then. Yeah. You can do chalk or you can use Legos or whatever.
- [12:46]
Mike Lanza
Yeah, yeah. And we play games. We. Well, too much to talk about. We used to have a play river in our front yard. So it would, the water would meander down this, this fiberglass tubs and we'd have rocks in there and different things. And then we would race boats down and then a pump would pump the water all the way back up. And we have a basketball hoop. The driveway itself, kids are always rollerblading on it and scootering. And then we decided to put stuff in the backyard and you could do a lot more in the backyard. There's a lot of regulations against building things in your front yard. So we have, in the backyard we have a two story playhouse. We have an in ground trampoline. So ground level trampoline. And it's right next to the playhouse. So kids jump from the roof of the, of the, of the playhouse down to the trampoline. We have a zip line. Lots of stuff, lots of fun.
- [13:41]
Alex Clark
Do you think that we're raising a generation of overprotected under prepared kids? Like our kids cooked? If we continue on the trajectory that we're on.
- [13:51]
Mike Lanza
Cooked? Yeah, I mean, I guess that's one way to put it. They're really not able to think for themselves very well. And, and you know, one of my favorite Examples is comparing sports or, or games that are organized by kids themselves versus the structured sports that we have, team sports that we have. So I, I played on Little League baseball. I, I think. I think literally baseball is fine, or ayso, soccer, all those things. But kids just don't organize their own games very much anymore. If I think about what, what the kids. Things that we used to do as kids, when we played our games, we would decide what to play. So we'd have to have some sort of social process to, oh, I want to play softball, I want to play basketball. I want to play this game, you know, some game that we. I made up. So you have to decide that. Then you have to decide where to play. Then you have to decide what the special rules are. Because sometimes when you're playing softball or when you're playing tag, you know, you have to avoid certain things. So you have to make the special rules and then you have to recruit players. So you have to go and you have to be a salesperson. You got to knock on doors and say, hey, we're going to play this game and this other kid's going to play. What do you think? And. And then they come. And then not every kid is as able as every other kid. Some kids are, you know, younger. Some kids, maybe we had a kid who was mentally disabled, who lived in a neighborhood, another kid who was. Who was deaf, hard of hearing. I hate to say it, but we're playing sports. Girls are not able. As able as boys are sometimes to play. And so we'd have separate rules for different kids. We were trying to create some sort of egalitarian system where everything worked for everybody. Not where, you know, always the best kids won all the time, and they dominated because then the kids who weren't very good at the sports wouldn't come back. And then we'd have arguments. We'd have to settle them ourselves. I mean, it sounds a lot like what we want adults to do. Yeah, that we want them to decide what to do. We want them to sell it to other people. We want them to include, you know, lots of other people. And we want them to settle the problems and make everything work. And so that's getting that practice is really important for kids, and they're not really doing it.
- [15:59]
Alex Clark
What do you think is more dangerous, letting your kid walk to a friend's house alone or giving them an iPad?
- [16:04]
Mike Lanza
It's not dangerous. It's very safe. You know, walking on the street, going to their friend's house is dangerous. But heck, I mean, I guess if you don't want kids to have any danger, they should stay in bed all day. You know, danger is a part of life. I remember, I think back now every day of school. Now we live in Northern California. We have very nice weather, never snows. It was very flat where we live. My kids never ever rode in a car to go to school. We rode our bikes to school every day. And they never were on a trailer. They were always on their own bike. Even starting in kindergarten. That's dangerous. You know, you got a kid who's not on a trailer, not with training wheels. And sometimes cars whiz by. We weren't on big roads, but we were still on roads with cars. It would have been lot safer for me just to say, I'll get in the car. Yeah, let's go that way. But they learned so much. They, they, they, they became able to go to friends houses after school. They became able to go to other places on their own to go to the store. So that investment of, of doing things that are less safe actually paid huge dividends in the end.
- [17:11]
Alex Clark
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- [19:05]
Mike Lanza
Oh yeah. Parents out there will, you know, nod their head and be very familiar with this. There are long periods of every day where kids are zombies. They're sitting there staring at this screen, flicking up and clicking, you know, play, play, Play. On the YouTube videos you say, hey, you know, let's have dinner. Can you set the table? Okay, yeah, yeah. You know, they're, they're just not actually sentient human beings for long periods of time. To me that's a boring childhood. I mean, not to say that everything has to be exciting all the time, but I'd like to see them creating things themselves a little more, thinking about what they're doing, learning how to interact with other people, learning how to, to, to manage groups and, and to, and to be mentors for other kids. All sorts of things. Rather than just sitting there and clicking and scrolling all the time.
- [20:01]
Alex Clark
Would you let a five year old walk into a small store or a little cafe by themselves to pay, let's say for a, for a drink or an ice cream or something while you waited outside.
- [20:14]
Mike Lanza
If I have my kid totally sheltered the first five years of their life, of his or her life, and then all of a sudden at five I say okay, go, go to go to the store and buy this thing. They're not going to know what the heck to do. But I think that just like reading is a skill that parents can foster, you know, hitting a, hitting a baseball, playing soccer, just like those things, independence is a skill.
- [20:36]
Alex Clark
I110 agree with you. I brought this up with my audience. I started World War iii. Basically, they were not happy. Well, you know, it was about like half and half were not happy. But I don't know if you saw the viral video recently, I think this kid was 7 and the mom let him go into Chick Fil a by himself with some money to go get something at Chick Fil a, like a milkshake or something. And she was outside in the car, but then was waiting for him right outside the door in the car. And then he came back. I mean there were parents, yeah, there were parents in the comments section of this video saying things like if I was in that Chick Fil a and I saw a child come in by themselves, I would call the cops. This is so reckless. This is dangerous parenting. I mean, in that seven year old though, when you're watching the video, he is so proud. He's like, mom, let me do that again. Like that was so fun. But you know, that seven year old was ready. That mom knew that her own child and knew that that child was ready. So I brought this scenario up with a 5 year old. I said, I, I asked my audience, would you let a five year old go into like a little store if you told them what to get? Like let's say like, you know, a. I don't know, I'm not saying like a big box store, like a Walmart or Costco or something, but like a small store. You know, you go there all the time with them, they know the routine and you're like, hey, I want you to go pick up a banana or something or whatever. Some 5 year olds is exactly what I said. Some are going to be able to do that. Some aren't, you kid. I mean, but they were very upset about this. Like there's no way a 5 year old would ever be ready.
- [21:59]
Mike Lanza
Yeah, it's, it's crazy to say this. A 5 year old can't do this. So would they yell at someone if a 5 year old were able to read this children's book? Because five year olds aren't supposed to read. No, some kids, some 5 year olds are able to read another thing I'll say you mentioned. So now that we're talking about by going to a retail store, it has been very important for me that, that we patronize, we go to stores that are in our neighborhood and that we get to know people who work there. And I like, I like mom and pops, I like places where there are people that have been working there for years. You know, we had a bike shop. All the guys who work there had been working there for many years. We had a barber shop we went to where the same guys have been there for more than 10 years. And we went there all the time, and we went there by bike so my kids could go there on their own. And sure enough, my. My. My oldest son, when he was like 6, 7 years old, if he had a problem with his brakes, I say go. Yeah, go to the bike shop.
- [22:56]
Alex Clark
Right.
- [22:57]
Mike Lanza
And you know, they'll charge me later if, if it costs something. But he was able to go and talk to them and get it done.
- [23:03]
Alex Clark
And I was doing the same kind of stuff. I mean, I was riding my bike around the neighborhood and doing stuff on my own. And I, um. I mean, those are like some of the best memories and best times of my life.
- [23:12]
Mike Lanza
You feel really good about yourself.
- [23:14]
Alex Clark
Yeah. And I loved like you had in the beginning of the book. You were like, list all of your favorite moments of childhood before high school.
- [23:22]
Mike Lanza
Yeah.
- [23:23]
Alex Clark
And then kind of look and see what they all had in common. And when most people do that, which I did, and I say it at the beginning of this episode, what I had written, when people do that, you realize almost all of them are going to be outside. Almost all of those best memories are outside. No adults learning things on your own, playing with other kids. And the contrast of like what we experienced growing up and then the kids now and how. I don't know what they're gonna put on that list.
- [23:50]
Mike Lanza
I mean, parents can be, you know, can have great experiences with their kids, but I don't think any kid is gonna say, oh, when I watched that video, boy, that was. I was eight years old. Oh, my God.
- [24:06]
Alex Clark
Feel that way a little bit about Scooby Doo on Zombie island, but that was a once a year thing, Halloween. See, so it was really special. We didn't have streaming. When I can just pull it up all the time. It seems to me like parents trust kids today less than our parents trusted us. Would you agree or disagree?
- [24:23]
Mike Lanza
We could say it's trust, or we could say they're busier and they're less able to deal with a dangerous or uncertain situation. You know? You know, when parents are juggling so much, the easiest thing to do is say, here, take the iPad, go. Whereas when parents weren't so busy, they could look in on their kids every once in a while. They could look out the front window and say, okay, they're fine. They're riding their bike on the street, no problem. But the easiest thing to do is to give them an iPad. They'll be quiet. They won't say a word.
- [24:56]
Alex Clark
So you know what I think when I hear that, Mike? Is it requires parenting.
- [25:00]
Mike Lanza
Yeah.
- [25:01]
Alex Clark
And these devices A lot of times I think have become the parent, they're the babysitter. Instead of coming, it's going to take more work. When you're at a restaurant to make sure your kid is entertained or whatever, waiting for the food, it's easier to give them, you know, a brain numbing iPad. And then when it comes to playing outside. Yeah. Being aware, where are they, where are they going and all that kind of stuff. As opposed to, well, I know they're in the room on the right and.
- [25:24]
Mike Lanza
Internet and the example I keep bringing up, going to school. Are you going to drive to school? Boy, that's easy. Just throw them in the, throw them in the back. They, they get in their harness and you take them to school. Easy. Or do you ride bikes with them to school? That's tiring, but it's, it's an investment.
- [25:40]
Alex Clark
What would you say to a parent that thinks that more freedom just equals more danger and they can't see past that.
- [25:45]
Mike Lanza
Please go back to the Soviet Union. Good lord. Oh my God. I just, you know, this touches on the politics of this, this podcast, but, but I really believe that, that freedom is fundamental to a good life and there's so many great things that come with it. If you believe that kids should be really as safe as possible, then you believe in dictatorial control.
- [26:13]
Alex Clark
And this is a great point to bring up with my audience because they're very opposed to that in every other thing.
- [26:18]
Mike Lanza
Freedom has its costs. If kids are freed to do things, they're gonna get injuries that they might not get if they were sitting looking at their iPad for, you know, for 12 hours in a day. One thing that I'm very proud of with my kids and with kids who come to my yard a lot are that they, kids learn to take risks. And you think, huh, I thought kids were just crazy and all they wanted to do was take risks and they would, they get in, they get into trouble and they get into accidents and they get injured. When a kid is so constrained, is so totally controlled, when they come to a place like my yard, yeah, they might go crazy and they might break something that hasn't happened. But kids will go crazy like bats out of hell, so to speak. They've hadn't had freedom, but if you give them the ability to jump on the trampoline, to jump from the playhouse to the trampoline, to go on the zip line, to do these things and just let them go if they have time to do it, you know, if you watch them from the kitchen window, they actually think About Is this a risk that I can take?
- [27:20]
Alex Clark
Yeah.
- [27:20]
Mike Lanza
Can I do this?
- [27:21]
Alex Clark
It's risk assessing.
- [27:22]
Mike Lanza
I'm going to try a little. I'm going to try something that I didn't try before. If they, if they're used to taking risks, they get good at it. And what do we want kids? Don't we want kids to be able to grow up and, and take good risk, to take risks in their career, to be entrepreneurs? Sure. That starts with childhood.
- [27:39]
Alex Clark
Have you heard at all how much time kids today are spending on screens versus playing outside?
- [27:44]
Mike Lanza
I knew this when I wrote Playborhood, which was over 10 years ago. I'm sure it's worse now. I, I don't know the numbers. I mean it, it used to be, I remember one statistic.
- [27:54]
Alex Clark
I feel like it's like over 1200 hours or something.
- [27:57]
Mike Lanza
I mean I just on a daily basis I remember seeing the kids had, supposedly had like half hour of free time a day because the rest of the time I guess it's not free time if you're sitting working with your, with your iPad somehow. Yeah, I think free time is like when you're outside and you're looking around and you're, and you're coming up with something to do physically, but it's, it's, it's too much.
- [28:25]
Alex Clark
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- [30:29]
Mike Lanza
We didn't have a TV for a while. You know, I have lap. I'm a computer software entrepreneur. So, you know, I've got a computer, I've got an iPhone, my wife has a computer, she's got an iPhone. But we didn't give them to our kids when they were, when they were little kids. Nothing. They had nothing. And you know, you bring someone into the world, they don't know what the world is like. They don't know what the world expects of them. So you can start them in their lives without tv, without video games, without iPads, without phones. At a certain point, and I think for us it was like age of 11 or 12, we gave our kids phones. Not because we were trying to push them to use phones, but my philosophy is, you know, when you start to see other people using them and you start to get a feeling for what this is and other kids have them, I don't want to be restrictive. I don't want to say to my kids, no, you can't do this thing that everybody else is doing. I want to make what I want Them to do more attractive. So I want our yard and our neighborhood to compete with iPhones. I don't want to restrict and say, no, you can't touch these things that everybody has and everybody knows about.
- [31:35]
Alex Clark
In your opinion, at what age should parents start getting comfortable with kids playing out of eyesight?
- [31:40]
Mike Lanza
What I did, let me explain what I did with my oldest son and then I did with my younger kids. I would be outside with my older son, like an afternoon, especially on weekends, in the front yard. I'd let him play, you know, with me, and then I'd, I would sort of give him more and more rope. And eventually then I would start like, oh, I need to go into the garage to, because I'm fixing something in front, or I need to, you know, go to the bathroom. And, and so, and, and it's nerve wracking. It's kind of like when you're riding bikes with kids to go to school, but they're learning, you're learning. And eventually I wrote a series of articles on, on our blog about the, the, the range that my son Marco, who's my oldest, had where he could go on his own from five to six to seven to eight to nine years old. It just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And I was very interested in pushing that envelope so that he would feel comfortable and I would feel comfortable. I guess my point is to say that I was conscious about, about enabling him to give more independence aggressively over time to the point where he could go across the street and knock on someone's door.
- [32:51]
Alex Clark
And so you kind of just did the same rules with each kid.
- [32:54]
Mike Lanza
Yeah. And you know, as you, you know, I don't know if you have siblings, but when, when you have a sip, when you have an older sibling, that older sibling really teaches the younger sibling things. And, and that younger sibling is in much better position to become independent if he's got an independent older brother or sister.
- [33:11]
Alex Clark
What is one thing that you've done as a parent that would make today's parents gasp?
- [33:16]
Mike Lanza
I think Marco was in third grade. He, he and I were riding bikes to school every day. He knew the route very, very well every day, you know, and this one day, I could not pick him up from school, and I was fine with that. But a wrinkle in it was we were having haircuts in downtown, our downtown, where we live. So I gave him the task and I gave him a map. And we looked at the map the night before. We looked at the next morning how he was going to ride from school to the barber shop.
- [33:48]
Alex Clark
Ooh, that's a good one.
- [33:51]
Mike Lanza
Yeah. Long story short, he did it.
- [33:53]
Alex Clark
Wow.
- [33:54]
Mike Lanza
He did it. I was really proud of him. I was really excited. He was a little nervous. He learned a lot about maps. He learned a lot about. And he's actually good. He was good at thinking spatially. You know, every road that he wrote on, he had written on before.
- [34:07]
Alex Clark
Yeah.
- [34:08]
Mike Lanza
And this time he had to put it all together and do it on his own. And he did. He. We met at the barbershop and we had. We got haircuts.
- [34:15]
Alex Clark
Why does risky play benefit kids long.
- [34:18]
Mike Lanza
Term, by the way? This, it's, it happens pretty much every time a kid comes to my house is they look at that two story playhouse, they look at the trampoline and they put two and two together and they think, I'm going to climb that playhouse and I'm going to jump onto the trampoline. They all do it. If they're, you know, a little bit acclimated to the place. If they're not like, you know, in a fun place for the first time in years, which is the way some kids are at the start, they really think they'll jump up to the railing, you know, the railing which is like this high, three feet high. And then they'll jump from there to the trampoline. And then they'll go a little bit higher and they'll jump and then they'll go up higher and they'll sit there for like five minutes, you know, and they'll hyperventilate. What are they doing? They're thinking about who they are. They're thinking about what their capabilities are. They're thinking and they're mustering the courage. They're doing things. They're doing all these things and then they decide to do it. And, you know, 98, 99% of the time, there's no problem at all. They might twist an ankle or something like that, but they're conquering their fears. They're doing something. They feel good about themselves and then they become creative. They try different kinds of jumps and, and they're, they're, they're doing things that are stretching themselves in ways we want them to do as adults.
- [35:38]
Alex Clark
So many parents are reluctant to let their kids do something like ride their bike around the neighborhood because of this fear of predators. What is your response to that?
- [35:48]
Mike Lanza
It's extremely, extremely unlikely. If you want to overcome that fear, walk with your kids around the block. Get to know the people who live around the block. Have them get to know the people who Live around the block. And then it won't. Won't be so scary. It won't be so strange. It is really, really important for kids, for parents to model to their kids that the neighborhood is our place. It's our place. It's like our extended living room. It's our place where we go out, we get to know people, we talk to people. It's a safe place.
- [36:20]
Alex Clark
I think the other fear is the, okay, so we get to know them. But the point is, is that not every parent, not every family is going to parent like us. They won't have the same rules. Their kids might be allowed to have phones at 8 years old, and mine aren't. And what if they show them something when I'm not there that I don't want them to see?
- [36:36]
Mike Lanza
You know, when my kids were riding their bikes, you know, like 10 years old, 11 years old, their biggest fear was that they would be yelled at by some adult. Not that they would be hit or. Not that they would be abducted, but that just some cranky adult would say, hey, you shouldn't be riding your bike. My kids are now 15, 17, and 20. I started this from the time Marco was a little toddler, so over 15 years ago. But our neighborhood today is more vibrant with kids than it was when my kids were little. I see more kids out riding their bikes, playing on the street, having fun. It's a long game we're playing here. You know, this is not about, you know, my kids going out one day and in declaring victory. This is about changing culture in a neighborhood. And for instance, now I would say our elementary school or local elementary school, probably 70% of kids walk or bike to school.
- [37:32]
Alex Clark
Oh, that's incredible. That's. That's very impressive.
- [37:35]
Mike Lanza
Yeah.
- [37:36]
Alex Clark
What about. Okay, so let's say somebody listening is like, okay, I love this idea. I love what Mike did. I want to start a playborhood, but I have an hoa. There's no way the HOA is going to let me do a bunch of stuff and, you know, in the front of my house and all of this. What's your advice for those people?
- [37:48]
Mike Lanza
You can bring out your portable lawn chairs and you can sit out there. Then you can put them back in later. The biggest statement you can make is if you've put physical facilities in that are not movable. Like this. In ground trampoline, like this playhouse, I talked about, like, all these artworks. But, you know, one of the places I wrote about in playborhood was an apartment complex where moms decided, you know, they were stay at home moms. We're just going to pull out our lawn chairs every day and we're going to bring some cardboard boxes out and balls and you know, our little stuffy apartments. We're not going to sit in there during the summer. We're going to go outside. You know, if our kids want us, they got to come outside and be with us.
- [38:28]
Alex Clark
If somebody only had $500 and a backyard, what should they build first?
- [38:34]
Mike Lanza
Seating is highly underrated. Big beanbag chairs. Big beanbag. We have huge beanbag chairs and we, we have next door trampoline. Sometimes kids put them on a trampoline, sometimes they pull them off. Beanbags are both comfortable and great for tumbling and jumping. So I guess that would be my number one recommendation.
- [38:54]
Alex Clark
Okay. Seating with beanbag chairs that you can get out. What really makes a backyard magnetic to kids?
- [39:00]
Mike Lanza
There's something I can't fully explain. Even for me as an old guy, jumping on a trampoline is really fun. And if you have some music and you can jump up and down to the beat of the music, it's so much fun. And particularly if it's ground level the way ours is, it's very social. So I think the problem with most trampolines that are above ground, they got that net cage that goes around it. It's very antisocial. It's kind of hard to hang out and to run around in the yard and play with people who are on the trampoline. But if it's ground level, then you get kids over here, you get kids over here, then kids, those kids want to run across a trampoline and jump into the, the beanbag chairs. And then, you know, you get five kids over here that want to jump on the trampoline. It's a very social and very fun place to be.
- [39:49]
Alex Clark
I like what you just said. That's so interesting. I've never thought about it before that the trampolines that have the big nets around them are antisocial. Yeah, I never would have thought that. But you saying that makes sense.
- [39:59]
Mike Lanza
Yeah, I mean, you know, to be honest, everything we've done in our yard is about trying to get kids to be, to play and be social at the same time.
- [40:10]
Alex Clark
So how can a parent encourage their kid to engage in more risky play?
- [40:15]
Mike Lanza
This two story playhouse that I mentioned, most people don't have the space or money or time to get a two story playhouse. But what I want to say is that I put rock climbing holds on the playhouse. You know, put them on the side of Your house. It sounds a little crazy, but give kids a little bit of assistance to actually climb and they'll, they'll climb and they'll find things and they'll have, they'll have, you know, we actually have. You gave kids ways to get on the fence between our yards, two yards. And so kids would play these games up and down the fence line. So we encourage kids, we don't encourage them to go, you know, do anything. That's really crazy. Maybe people think it's crazy to let kids go on their fence, but what.
- [40:57]
Alex Clark
I think is interesting about your wife and you is that you didn't care. Like, your priority wasn't, I need to have this picture perfect yard or house or whatever. Like, it was about making a community space that can really impact multiple generations of kids in a positive way. So, like, you weren't worried about, like, oh, is this gonna look bad having this on my fence?
- [41:18]
Mike Lanza
You know, you look at all these yards and, you know, the mindset that most people have is, oh, that's so pretty. Oh, that's so nice. And I think, oh, how dull. You know, no one's out there using it. No one's out there having fun. People aren't talking to me. It's all about social interactions. Another thing that people think about is, well, how is that going to affect my resale value?
- [41:44]
Alex Clark
Yes.
- [41:45]
Mike Lanza
Well, I'm not selling this house in a year or two, okay? So let me enjoy my yard. Let me help other people to enjoy my yard. That's what's most important. If I got to fix it up when I'm going to sell it, I'll spend a few thousand dollars, I'll fix it up so I can sell it. But right now, I want to live in my yard.
- [42:00]
Alex Clark
Yeah, people aren't even living in their, in their homes, really. Another thing that I'm super passionate about is American playgrounds. I feel like there's so much I could say, but they have drastically changed, even from the 90s. And what we allow the material that they're made out of, the amount of risky things to do on a playground. Even if you could wave a magic wand and change anything about American playgrounds to make them better for kids, what would it be?
- [42:28]
Mike Lanza
Make them much smaller and much more numerous? 90 something percent of kids who are at playgrounds these days are with a parent. Believe me, I don't dislike parents. I'm a parent myself. But I want kids to have independent play. I want them to go places on their own and have fun on their own. That to me is the essence of a good childhood. When you have these playgrounds that are one for every neighborhood or even less than one per neighborhood, you find that no one walks there and very few people walk there. I love these neighborhood parks and playgrounds that are surrounded by houses where, you know, they're very inviting to people. I'd like to see a lot more of them and, you know, just open space and seating and simple things. But more, more I think is better.
- [43:23]
Alex Clark
A mom friend of mine told me, she was like, alex, every time I go to the playground, I'm the only parent who is like sitting away. And my kid is, you know, on the playground. I kind of see them, but they're pretty far.
- [43:33]
Mike Lanza
And I'm not sure. Yes, the playground culture.
- [43:35]
Alex Clark
She said, said, she said, every parent today, their kid is playing and they are right on top of them the entire time. Even some of these older kids, the, the parent is standing right there as they're swinging or whatever. They don't like, go and sit and talk to the other parents at the playground even they're always on their kid. And she said, and they all look at me like I'm crazy because I'm the only one who's just like, oh yeah, my kid's over here somewhere, you know, And I don't know, is that strange to you?
- [44:00]
Mike Lanza
It's really strange because parents don't let their kids. Sometimes they don't let their kids out of their yards, but they don't let their kids like beyond their block. I think that's where the activity has to be. It has to be right where they live. You know, when your parent comes and your parent stands over you, that's just, that's a qualitatively very different and I would say inferior experience to kids going out with each other in their own neighborhood and playing with each other.
- [44:32]
Alex Clark
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- [47:02]
Mike Lanza
There is this fallacy that kids need to be scheduled. The kids need to have like somehow we're not good parents or my kids aren't aren't good kids unless we have their summers scheduled every week. If we have every hour of every weekend day scheduled, I think free time is really important, especially if they don't use screens. Free time to be outside I think is really important. And to me that's the real tragedy is that people think that kids need to be scheduled all the time.
- [47:38]
Alex Clark
How do American playgrounds compare to those in Europe or Scandinavia when it comes to design, safety and encouraging free play?
- [47:45]
Mike Lanza
Well, there's, generally speaking, we have more rules in America. We have more litigiousness. We have, you know, more possibility of lawsuits. There are some shiny examples in some other countries of really fun playgrounds. In Germany, there's this movement called adventure playgrounds, and we have a few in America. We have one in Berkeley, in California, close to where I live. Adventure playgrounds. I'll just spend a moment on that. There are places where you've got lots of building materials and lots of, you know, little structures and things and kids can add to it and they're, they're sort of building their own forts and building their own worlds and, you know, usually with some, some adult, you know, some adult mentoring the kids, supervising the kids to some extent because there are some dangerous tools, but they could get really crazy and really, really fun. I like those. I, I, Berlin is well known. I haven't been there myself to see these playgrounds, but Berlin is well known for having really fun playgrounds. I think American playgrounds compared to when I was a kid are just not very exciting. I mean, not very, you know, the, the risk was part of the fun, right? And, and they just don't have that anymore. Because of that, I've kind of given up on playgrounds, frankly. I like to see kids doing things like, you know, like parkour, you know, free running. I like that sort of thing. You know, just going to public spaces, riding your skateboards, you know, hopping from roof to, you know, to railing to, you know, all that sort of thing. That's a very interesting movement, in my opinion.
- [49:20]
Alex Clark
What are some testimonies of people who have implemented your tips in playborhood into their own neighborhoods and how it's improved their, their state of play.
- [49:32]
Mike Lanza
So there's, there's one neighborhood close to me in Northern California. They, so I did a neighborhood summer camp one week every summer for a while. Very successful, lots of great stories. But this other neighborhood, they heard about my neighborhood summer camp and they did it way better. So amazing story. They live on one of these horseshoe streets, so it's, it's not a dead end, but you go in and then the only way out is to go around and come back out again. Again. I'll do that for the camera. And so it's a self contained neighborhood and they do it. They were doing, I don't know if it's still happening. They were doing a neighborhood summer camp every summer and out of. I remember from a couple years, out of 70 kids between 5 and 18 who live on this, on this street, 67 showed up for the neighborhood summer camp.
- [50:26]
Alex Clark
Holy smokes. What were they doing at the camp?
- [50:27]
Mike Lanza
They were doing really fun activities, you know, different kinds of obstacle courses and on crafts and art. But the way they get the older kids is they, they gave older kids different levels of camp counselor status. And they actually gave money to some of the older kids. So they would collect money for, you know, from each family, for each kid that was participating. And then the kids that were counseling, they gave some money to them. So these kids, these older kids, they feel like, you know, I'm, you know, doing something good for my college application and I'm getting, I'm making a little money. So they feel like they're doing some. Something productive, but they're all playing together.
- [51:05]
Alex Clark
Yeah.
- [51:05]
Mike Lanza
And they just created this great dynamic between all the kids. And at the very end of the week, on Friday, they have a big neighborhood block party all day. It's great.
- [51:14]
Alex Clark
If nothing changes, what will childhood in America look like in 20 years?
- [51:21]
Mike Lanza
Can it get much worse than it is today? I think kids might get fatter, less physically fit. Childhood obesity in certain states is over 30%.
- [51:37]
Alex Clark
Yep. Half of teenagers in America are clinically obese.
- [51:40]
Mike Lanza
Wow. It is getting worse and worse.
- [51:43]
Alex Clark
It's sad, isn't it?
- [51:43]
Mike Lanza
Yeah.
- [51:44]
Alex Clark
Yeah. It's scary. Yeah. You think like, man, can it get worse than this? And then to imagine what would worse look like when it's already so bad.
- [51:51]
Mike Lanza
You know, I'm, I'm a bit deluded because personally, I saw a problem and I saw my, I saw my, my name, my, my, My own yard become a hangout, which I didn't think was possible. I see my kids actually, you know, do pretty well, thrive. My oldest son has pretty heavy duty adhd, but actually he's been doing pretty well. He just got accepted to a great college. UC Berkeley. Yeah. So he's doing great. And so I've seen that, at least personally. And I think in my neighborhood too, not just me, but people who live around us, they figure some things out. And I think things are better now. So I believe things can get better. I hope so.
- [52:38]
Alex Clark
So how do people start? I want to make a playborhood. You know, they do the beanbags, maybe they put in a. In ground trampoline. They do some stuff in their front yard. They make sure they're sitting in their front yard so they can wave to neighbors and welcome them over and all that Kind of stuff. Beyond that, do they need to be alerting the neighborhood? Like, hey, we're going to be doing something new. Like, your kids are always welcome. What's the, like, first steps, get out.
- [52:59]
Mike Lanza
Of your car, walk around the neighborhood, ride bikes around the neighborhood, go to stores when you can. Rather than, rather than drive, be present. You know, show up in the neighborhood with your kids. Make your kids feel like, this is our place. This is our extended living room. This is a place where we want, we want you to be and where we want to be. Yeah, get to know your neighbors, talk to them, join cookouts with them, things like that. If you invest, they'll feel comfortable and they'll want, they'll want to do it on their own, too.
- [53:29]
Alex Clark
Tell everybody about Playborhood. What else do you get into in the book that we didn't get into here?
- [53:34]
Mike Lanza
Well, Playborhood is a book. I'd like to think it's timeless, was published back in 2012 and it's, I think the subtitle is make your neighborhood into a place for play. It's really a how to book for parents to try to think about how they can make their neighborhood a place where kids will feel happy and comfortable going outside rather than just, you know, rather than always just staying inside and playing with their screens or, or being on scheduled activities. So I talked a lot about my yard and about my neighborhood. And the book also talks about other neighborhoods that are different than ours. There's one that's kind of a low income neighborhood in South Bronx in New York. There's this really cool, wild kind of hippie place in Portland, Oregon. There's that neighborhood, excuse me, that, that apartment complex I talked about. So there's diverse places for people who aren't coming from the same kind of suburban neighborhood that we live to try to give you different ideas, different perspectives on how to make it happen.
- [54:36]
Alex Clark
If you could heal a sick culture, physically, emotionally, or spiritually with any remedy, what would it be?
- [54:43]
Mike Lanza
Well, the culture that we're talking about is the culture of childhood. And to me, the culture of childhood, the foundation should be the neighborhood, the place right outside your home where other people live, where children live. And I would say, get out there, show up in your neighborhood with your kids and give them, over time, the ability to do more and more on their own, independently.
- [55:09]
Alex Clark
I love it. Mike, I have been so excited to have you for months and months and months. I loved your interview with Ginny, who's a dear friend of mine, and read your book and was like, ginny give me his contact. I've just got to have him on. I just. I think what you're doing and what you have done is so important. So thanks for coming on Culture Apothecary.
- [55:25]
Mike Lanza
Oh great. Thank you.
- [55:30]
Alex Clark
This episode was a personal passion project for me. I feel so called to improve the state of play. If you do too, you should make a commitment to make your own yard a playborhood. Please leave a five star review. Tell me the episode that initially brought you here. I'd love to hear it. We're on a mission to heal a sick culture. Twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays, 6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern. New guests bring their own unique remedy. To do that, subscribe to Real Alex Clark on YouTube. Follow me on Instagram at Real Alex Clark. You can also get merch for the show if you want to rep us in the wild. Tpusamerch.com code Alex Clark. That'll get you 10% off. I'm Alex Clark and this is Culture Apothecary.