Stranger Than Most

By SUSAN LAUTZ, LPC

Before they started spending every waking moment glued to a screen, kids used to play outside. In fact our parents insisted on it. Some unlucky kids even had mothers who would lock the door behind them. My parents never went that far, but I do remember being told repeatedly to vacate the premises.

And play we did. From the minute we got home from school until dinner time all the neighborhood kids were outside. (Back then you didn’t start getting homework until you were in junior high.)

Now that I’m counseling kids, I notice that a lot of their problems stem from the fact that they never play anything but video games, inside and alone. So some of what I’m really doing in “play therapy” is exactly the kind of stuff we used to do outside all those years ago. I’ve come up with a list of four classic kid games.

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