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Comment by achenatx | Hacker News Reader

My kids (11,6, 3) are so lame they are scared to play outside by themselves. I bought 100 acres with a creek so we would have a place to hike, camp, explore, build forts, shoot guns etc.

My kids have been so coddled, they cant even play in the yard for long before they want to come in. Over the last year they are getting better, but when they have friends over, many of them wont even go into the forest and will only stay close to the house.

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Why is that? Did you make the mistake of teaching them to code?

Why is that a mistake?

I think starpilot is trying to make a joke off of the stereotypical "I taught my kid to ___ and it was a horrible mistake!" articles, especially the ones where the gist is "I taught my kids to code and now they sit in front of their computers all day".

Could be wrong in that assessment, but that's how I read it.

Perhaps you could show them what they're missing out on. Have you been able to talk them into camping yet? With 100 acres and a creek you've got to have a couple of nice spots.

right, you have to lead by example. don't even need to start with camping. just go out for a few hours and explore your property. map the borders, follow the creek.

somewhere out there, build a tree-hut, show your kids what fun can be had there.

My kids are about a year behind yours, but are quite adventurous despite growing up in the city. My parents live at the edge of the metropolis and have a similar sized property with forest and stream and a small lake. It’s quite often that the older two simply vanish on a nice afternoon at grandparents. What’s disturbing is my own panic at not knowing where they are when they’ve gone off exploring the same land that I did as a child.

fyi, I think age has a lot to do with it. my kids were 8 and 6 before they started playing outside (0.83 acres) no neighborhood kids to speak of.

if you don't mind me asking, when you say your kids 'have been so coddled', well... by whom?

This is my question... must be the schools fault, right?

our fault for living in a sterile suburb. All yards were fenced off so they got used to playing in a cul de sac close to the house.

One of the reasons we moved was to give them more direct access to nature.

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