Sticks, mud pies, trees, roof tops, yards, roads, sidewalks. All fun too, thanks nature and society.

Absolutely. I am blown away by how my 6 y/o daughter, raised so far w/ no "screens" and minimal exposure to video, can figure out how to make almost any natural material into a toy. It has been a challenge to keep rocks and plant matter from filling up our house.

You are making the presumption that a modern parent would permit their child to go outside and play without going with them. The primary reason most kids don't want to play outside is because their parent goes with them and kills every single opportunity for fun.

> parent goes with them and kills every single opportunity for fun

Sad but true. I'm super self-conscious of dancing because when I was little my mom would always chaperone these events and watch me. Now I always feel like there's somebody standing around with nothing better to do but analyze my every move, judging who I'm talking to, saying, etc. When my friends come over I hate even talking to them in the house because I know she's listening. Same thing with phone calls in the house. I always need to go for a walk for that.

I would love to do this, but cannot in my location. Both because it would be too easy to step into fast moving traffic (age specific issue), and because people have been known to have CPS called on them for letting their child play unattended.

Opposite problem with my kiddo. He is nine and doesn't want to go outside unless a parent goes with him.

We've raised both our kids with "no-screens" (now 5 and 9 yrs old). They don't have their own devices and may not use ours. An exception is for the 9 yr old to use the laptop when learning to code at scratch.mit.edu. If they need to watch something - its a movie on the big screen in the evening only on if the next day is a school holiday.

Yes - they turn almost anything into a toy. They have access to all sorts of stuff to build things - lego, clay (and clay sculpting tools), scissors and paper, plenty of board games, and outdoors even when cold and/or rainy.

Holding my child back developmentally to own the libs

I know right?

I doubt Socrates would've developed into such an intellectual powerhouse without his iPad as a young lad.

> 9 yr old to use the laptop when learning to code at scratch.mit.edu

Wouldn't it just feel like a chore or homework at that point and not something you enjoy ?

Not really. We don't push her to do it. It's not something that is scheduled or something. If she thinks of something with animals she likes to create an animation out of it on scratch.

This is where I'm hoping to end up.

People don't realize that a lot of people with large tech exposure severely restrict access to things like phones/laptops. Gates and Jobs come to mind iirc.

There's tons of research showing that exposure to toys decreases creativity and the ability to play on your own with improvised toys. Learning how to use an operating system is trivial with the help of google. All of the arguments for letting your kids have unfettered access to electronics rest on the faulty assumption that familiarity is the important part of learning how to solve technical problems or to gain interest in technical subjects when there's just no consistent evidence to show this.

Don't they read?

Yeah. They read and we read to them as well. The 9 yr old also has extra work apart from regular school homework. Nothing on a screen though.

Having nothing to interact with is also fine: one can play games like tag, hide-and-seek, "20 questions", etc. One time my oldest decided he'd like to go outside and make note of all the flowers he found for a while. He just kept track in his head and told us all about it after he came in.

I am not sure if this is indeed get bored. When I read the title and remembered my childhood, get bored meant that I would find a rock or watch ants. But mostly, get anything that resemble a sphere and play soccer

I'd argue that preparation for downtime is in fact the key lesson.