Balanced and Barefoot
How Unrestricted Outdoor Play Makes for Strong, Confident, and Capable Children
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Balanced and Barefoot
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Narrated by:
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Rebecca Mitchell
About this listen
Today's kids have adopted sedentary lifestyles filled with television, video games, and computer screens. But more and more, studies show that children need "rough and tumble" outdoor play in order to develop their sensory, motor, and executive functions. Disturbingly, a lack of movement has been shown to lead to a number of health and cognitive difficulties, such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), emotion regulation and sensory processing issues, and aggressiveness at school recess break. So, how can you ensure your child is fully engaging their body, mind, and all of their senses?
Using the same philosophy that lies at the heart of her popular TimberNook program - that nature is the ultimate sensory experience, and that psychological and physical health improves for children when they spend time outside on a regular basis - author Angela J. Hanscom offers several strategies to help your child thrive, even if you live in an urban environment.
With this book, you'll discover little things you can do anytime, anywhere to help your kids achieve the movement they need to be happy and healthy in mind, body, and spirit.
©2016 Angela J. Hanscom (P)2016 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
a must read for any human
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Recommend!
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Informative and practical
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Fantastic book
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Robotic
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There is quite some repetition in the book but it’s a worthy read nonetheless, especially the first part in where the author explains all about movement, sensory integration and development.
The latter part gives pointers on how to achieve all that outside play. Though I can’t escape the idea that the author’s amount of free play would only be possible for stay at home parents with big houses and gardens, who live nearby woods or mountains and all that.
Oh, and I must say I was surprised to find out there was an actual person doing the narrating because it sounded so computerized.
Slightly repetitive but necessary info
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At the point they discussed the more frequent episodes of crying by children in classrooms they say something along the lines of it being even more concerning that many of the crying children are boys.
Apparently we are still holding the ridiculous idea that only girls should be allowed to cry, boys should obviously just repress their emotions. Never mind the worrying suicide rates of men clearly bottling up our emotions works.
I know there are lots of benefits to unstructured outdoor play but I couldn't sit through this awful bias to hear that.
Disappointed, couldn't bear to finish it
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Disorganised- the author likes to talk about a topic, throw in an unrelated point, go back to the previous topic, switch to a different topic, then add another point or two about the earlier topic.
Highly repetitive- she makes the same points over and over (and over and over) again throughout the book. I'm not talking about giving different examples that demonstrate the same principle in multiple ways; she just repeats the same words again and again.
Condescending- obviously there are times that an author will need to explain a technical term to make it more accessible to the average reader, but this author takes it to the extreme and explains EVERYTHING. For example, she felt it necessary to explain that the "flight" in fight or flight means run away. The tone throughout the whole book often made me feel like she thought her readers were complete idiots. This is made worse by the horrible, almost robotic narrator (I found reducing the playback speed slightly made it marginally more tolerable).
Many of the "practical suggestions" were things like if you are struggling to find time to let your kids play outside, try playing outside after school or on the weekends… gosh, I never would have thought of that on my own. The suggestions that weren't completely obvious were often completely impractical. After going on at length about how many schools and cities have removed merry go rounds because they are deemed too dangerous and fear being sued if a child got hurt she suggests building your own using tutorials from the internet. Or in the chapter about schools she states that children in urban schools can get out just as often as children in rural areas because they can walk to the local opera house… really? Time and time again she makes the assumption that everyone has ready access to huge gardens/yards and wooden areas where children have licence to roam free/build forts/etc. (often not the case in public spaces, national parks, etc.)
I wouldn't recommend wasting your time with this book.
Highly repetitive
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