A few months ago my younger brother, Clayton, had a baseball tournament, so thought I would do some of my observation hours at the park. He plays travel ball, so he and some of his friends from school play most of all year around. Any park is a very good place to observe children; You can catch them in their “natural habitat”. The park is a place where children can run, yell, and sweat until their heart is content. So when their mothers sit and talk to each other, the children try to get as far away as possible to just be themselves.

​

One of the first places I watch was the children sitting amongst us in the bleachers. When we first got to the game, it was obvious to tell which parents were high-self monitors (aware of their surroundings) and which ones were not. The high-self monitor parents respect the other people watching the game and know that any young child would hate to be stuck sitting in the bleachers watching their older brother play baseball while there are tons of playgrounds around. So they are quick to say that the child will cause a “scene” or disturbance in the crowd to which they then send them to the nearest playground, checking on them every so often. Parents who are lower self-monitors, or can be over protective (which is reasonable to me in a public park not to let your child go off without you), make their young other children sit and watch their sibling play the game. In other words, annoying everyone else trying to watch the game. They whine and beg to go play constantly which gives the parents three options: giving in and letting the child go off, disciplining the child and explaining why is it dangerous to go off alone, or completely ignoring the child. Unfortunately, I saw a lot of the last one.

​

The cool thing about completing observation hours is I got to see a lot of things that I would absentmindedly ignore on normal days. As I mentioned earlier, I saw a lot of parents ignoring their children. This is a technique that some parents swear by. They believe that if they do not pay their child any attention while said child is throwing a fit, the child will stop. I think this could work in some cases, maybe in a private household, but not always especially in public. I watched as a little girl, about five years old with brown curls put in pink tails, came up to her mother and asked for money to get an ice cream cone. The mother calmly explained that the game was almost over and they would leave and get dinner in a few minutes so she did not need any ice cream. The little girl exploded. She stomped her feet, frowning at the sky, and said “wwwwhhhhyyyyyyy”. Her mother, watching another child bat, simply overlooked this “acting out” because her decision was already made. Getting madder that her mother was not listening to her, pink tails forced herself to the ground and start kicking one of the poles holding up the shelter. After a few seconds, I was not the only person noticing this situation that was only made worse by the shelter shaking. It went on for a few minutes more until I assume the mother could not handle it anymore. She then took the little girl to the bathroom, which is known as a discipline death sentence in the south. It was only a few second later, the mother and little girl came out of the bathroom, and it was safe to say the little girl remained silent throughout the rest of the game.

​

While I was watching, I quickly detected which children were taught manners. I watched as one child went up to his mother and patiently waited while she talked to another mom before he politely asked if he could have some money for the concession stand. And a couple minutes after that, I watched as a little boy yelled at his mother from across one of the parks that he was hungry and she “needed” to bring him a hamburger. And all I could think about was how my daddy would have “whooped my tail” if I did anything like that even at my age now.

My next spot to watch was the sand playground behind us. It was equipped with a huge slide, wooden swinging bridge, stationary riding horses, and monkey bars. This was a place where loads of the kids at the ball park loved to play, and the adults and parents would let them because it was fenced in. Most parents are very worried all the time about their child being taken, so this fenced in area puts most of their minds at ease. But if you ask me, there is still the huge problem that anyone can get into the playground from the same gate as your kids, fenced in or not.

​

I’ll start with the huge slide. At any given time, there were about 5 kids playing on it. One would be at the top of the slide about to go down, 3 or so kids would be all up on each other up the stairs of the slide, and one child at the bottom of the slide trying to climb up the same tunnel a kid is about to slide down. Personal space is something that has to be taught to a child. They have no problem with being in each other’s space until it is taught to them that it is not necessarily wrong, but can make people very uncomfortable. That is another thing, until a child is taught cause-and-effect he will not understand that a child cannot go up and another one down a slide without them hitting each other and getting hurt.  

​

Next, one of my favorite parts of this park was the swinging bridge, and it is funny how every time I go to the park the bridge gets smaller. Now that I look at it, it seems really dangerous. And I think, why did my parents let me play on that? It was the cause for most of my splinters when I was younger. This was one of the coolest things I got to see all day. I watched these three kids, two boys and one girl, play this very creative game. They were pretending to be pirates on a ship. It seemed so real, especially to them. I wanted to get up and play with them. They rocked the bridge back and forth playing like there was a huge storm. The commentary was priceless, mostly something you would hear off of a nickelodeon show or cartoon. From what I could make out, they were being chased by another pirate ship and had to get the gold back to this island before this other ship captured them. They were using rocks as the gold, and once they reached the island, they grabbed the rocks and ran to the other side of play area. The enemy was coming so they buried the gold in the sand, and then sword fought the other pirates when they got close. They killed the other pirates, and all high-fived. And I may or may not have cheered as well. It was the most creative game I had ever seen played. Those kids are definitely going places. It gave me some hope too especially in this up and becoming technology ruled world, because as the amazing game was going on, I saw a small boy gaming a video game in the corner of the play area. 

​

The stationary riding horses are very old toys at the park. I think my dad even played on them when he was little. I was very saddened to only see one child play on them within an hour. I watched as this little boy walked over to them as if he had never seen one before. He walked around inspecting it, and hopped on and rode it for a little while. Unfortunately, he was unaware that although they rock front to back, they will not move from side to side. So I watched as he jerked his body to the side and flung himself off the horse. He wasn’t hurt though. He just kind of got up, looked around to see if anyone saw, and left the play area. I completely spit out my drink. I laughed so hard. This goes to show that when parents or others are around, it can cause a hurt child to act a certain way. He did not realize I was watching and thought no one else was, so he did not feel the need to act out and pretend he was hurt. Now if his mother was there, I believe it would have been a different story. He probably would have pretended to be hurt all in a ploy to get ice cream or another item, given to him by his mother, to sooth the pain. Most children like to get attention anyway they can, even if they are not starved for it.

​

Lastly, the monkey bars at parks are like the little kid Olympics. Kids can either do really cool things on them, or they’ll fall and get a face full of sand. It’s very interesting. I watched my many different children come and go within the hour. Some could make it all the way across without even flinching, others would fall down in the middle because the lack of arm strength, and some older kids would climb on top of the bars and sit. And as I was getting up to leave to go back to one of Clayton’s game, I saw these kids grab a ball and play basketball with the square holes. I was later filled in by my brother that is was a new game called monkey ball, which I thought was really creative.

​

Summary: All and all, I think I had a pretty successful day. I got to see a lot of interesting and thought-provoking things that I may not notice all the time. Throughout watching all these scenarios of kids playing, I realized just how different children behave with or without their parents around. When these kids tear out to the playground, they are able to act completely themselves. I think that as time goes on, we are taking more and more of this away from our children. So much emphases is put on growing up and getting ahead, we forget that in order to walk you must crawl first. If we do not allow the children of the world to relax and be themselves, we will churn out a bunch of adults who cannot handle themselves and lead monotonous lives.