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| Rowed to Joy
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| The name Silken Laumann evokes instant recognition and conjures up all the
finest aspects of elite athleticism. No longer competing as a champion
rower, she’s taken center stage in another uplifting campaign and all the
world’s children stand to benefit.
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Silken Laumann knows better than most what it means to dip in an oar.
Watching from the sidelines is not her style—an iconic Canadian sports hero with the power to inspire, this internationally renowned athlete, silver-and-bronze-medal-winning four-time Olympian and World Championship rower has gone from being a champion to championing a cause about which she feels most
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passionate—the preservation of childhood.
Turning the same traits that distinguished her as an elite athlete and competitor—determination, intelligence, perseverance, strength, and courage—to her current multiple roles as writer, inspirational speaker, social activist and mother of two young children, Laumann (www.silkenlaumann.com) is a tireless advocate for kids and their need to play.
We’re talking about the kind of unstructured child’s play that now hovers on the verge of extinction—the notion of kids on bikes touring their own neighborhoods unchaperoned and absent the oppressive hand-wringing of hyper-vigilant adults is as quaint as the hula hoop, nostalgic as a Pez dispenser.
Laumann, who lives in Victoria, was raised in Mississauga, Ontario—one of three children, she remembers a childhood characterized by the kind of carefree days and freedom that mostly eludes contemporary kids whose lives are frequently subject to over-the-top scrutiny and over-scheduling.
“When I grew up it was a different generation, the philosophy was very different. I think for most people my age or even 10 years younger the fondest memory of being a kid is being outside with your friends, touring the neighborhood and being on your bikes, playing capture the flag after dinner, hanging around the schoolyard after school. Life was very social. My social life was built in to the friends I hung out with from school and after school. I don’t ever remember there being hours and hours of homework,” says Laumann who’s in her early forties.
Her parents knew all of her friends by name because they were always over at the house, which helped instill a valuable sense of community that’s served Laumann in important and sustaining ways.
“I think it’s important—that sort of natural interaction with your peer group, that sort of natural friendship, learning to play fairly or by the rules or the game would stop, that support of feeling part of a community. Whatever was happening inside your home you still had a full community….So that made it a wonderful time to grow up. What I observe now as an adult and having children is that that has really been lost and that loss is tragic and unnecessary.”
Author of the recently released book, Child’s Play: Rediscovering the Joy of Play in our Families and Communities, (available at Amazon.com), Laumann, inducted into the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame in 1988, credits the liberties of childhood as a major contributor to her success and personal development.
“The freedom I had as a child contributed enormously to my athleticism. I got in great shape walking to school, running back from school cause I wanted to get home to have a snack so badly—I was always starving. Climbing trees, riding bikes, I would say we had no less than three hours of physical activity a day, between walking to school and having gym in the school and having all that play time after school. On many days it was as much as five hours a day.”
She wasn’t even introduced to organized sports until her final years of grade school, nor did her parents feel compelled to direct or drive her on any particular prescribed course.
“First of all there was less organized activity at the time and I think from my parents’ perspective, we got lots from the school and why pay for expensive lessons? Or hockey practice when we already played a lot and had a lot of fun and it didn’t seem a necessary thing in my family.
“If you talk to anybody between thirty and upwards, even Olympic athletes, you would find that most Olympic athletes got their physical conditioning from being kids, and playing and hacking around. Even Kyle Shewfelt who won the first Olympic gold medal ever for Canadian gymnastics, yes, he dreamed at six years old that he was going to win a gymnastics medal for Canada, but he got a lot of his training just jumping on the trampoline in his back yard.”
Inspired by the experiences and lessons derived from her own unfettered childhood, Laumann is committed to the idea that her two children should enjoy free time to indulge their imaginations.
“They have to be unscheduled, to be free and to be joyful. That’s what I see when I think of being a kid and riding my bike and roaring down a big hill with my feet off the pedals—I think that word, joy. And that’s what I’m really passionate about today—that kids get the opportunity to experience joy that comes from running and jumping and singing and dancing and playing.”
Trying to groom your kid for the medal ceremony on the Olympic podium?
Parents who keep their eyes firmly fixed on the prize at the expense of their children’s wellbeing are at risk of losing the real treasure, according to Laumann, founder of the grassroots organization Active Kids, (www.activekids.ca).
She advises overzealous parents to evaluate the undermining effects of overbooking kids and imposing adult-size limitations and expectations.
“Parents who push their kids too hard will find that their kids are going to rebel and not get the joy factor from what they’re doing and if they don’t get joy from what they’re doing, they’re not going to last as athletes. Even at the very highest level at the Olympic Games there has to be a level of fun. You have to get joy from it and if you don’t then you’re not tapping into your passion, into all the parts that make you great, not just good.”
And if you’re one of those moms or dads who attend every game and every practice, shouting support from the stands, well, maybe you ought to step back a little, take a chill pill, let go—allow your child to experience the wonders of independence, let them emerge from the oppressive glare of the parental spotlight.
“There is no place for overzealous parents on the sidelines. We have to do a little bit of inventory, analysis as to why we have to be on the sidelines encouraging and yelling…even encouraging and yelling too much. It’s just a kid’s soccer practice. They just want to play and be kids.”
She encourages parents to take a front-lines approach to giving back childhood to children. It’s important to feel hopeful, appreciate that you do have power and through applied effort and the will to make change, can achieve good result.
“One of the best things the family can do is have one night a week that is really family time. You go out on your bikes as a family. You go out after dinner for a walk to look at the stars. You make a point of being together as a family and being active together. You need to have one night that’s not about structure and that’s going to be great for physical activity but also great for our sense of family and community. Finding a safe place in the neighborhood where kids can play—being a part of that. Maybe that means going to your local school and saying one night a week we want the school opened so our kids can play floor hockey…I think the more parents that say that the more often it’s going to happen.”
Parents can also foster a sense of community by joining together as neighbors to take turns supervising area kids at the local park where they can safely run around and play.
As an athlete, Laumann is disturbed by the epidemic of obesity afflicting an entire sedentary generation of kids. Parents lament the condition of their out-of-shape progeny, even as they drive them from swimming lessons to baseball games, not understanding just how much physical activity that children really need in order to stay fit.
Kids, observes Laumann, are built to move.
“Being physically active is essential—if you’re not physically active you’re not going to grow properly. You don’t stretch your bones enough. Bones won’t build bone depth needed for healthy adulthood. If children aren’t physically active, they’re not going to build their lung capacity. They’ll be more susceptible to heart disease as they get older. Exercise is not one of those things that’s nice to have, you need to have it. Kids need to be active…
“We can’t just rely on organized sports—we have to push our schools to have an active recess time, to have a great physical activity program taught at the school…there’s great things happening around recess. There’s a group called Positive Playgrounds that are re-teaching schools how to play old schoolyard games, how to play Chinese skipping, how to do Double Dutch…most kids don’t know how to skip anymore…well, yeah, they’ll get hurt falling on the playground but we’ll let them go on to eventually die of heart disease...”
Hey, she moans, don’t get me started.
“It’s ironic because this generation of parents is so passionate about doing everything right, almost neurotic…Let’s give ourselves permission to do more by doing less. It’s really hard, you’re really going against the current, it takes a lot of discipline, I think, ‘oh my god, if I don’t get my kids into swimming will they be able to swim properly?’ I just think we have to have confidence that we can teach our kids to throw a ball. They can learn to kick a soccer ball in the backyard with mom and dad or neighbors and friends, not everything is about being taught by an expert.”
Her vision typically extends beyond the parochialism of nationality. She is chair of the international board of Right to Play, (www.rightoplay.com) a group dedicated to bringing play to the most disadvantaged places in the world, working in refugee camps, working with former child combatants, re-connecting them into the community, working in Israel and Palestine, bringing Israeli kids and Palestinian kids together to play because they believe that play works outside of all religious or political barriers.
“When I first went to Africa I think a part of me thought, well, a refugee camp is about food and water. When you see all these kids and they’re standing around and they’ve got nothing to do and you can see their eyes—they’ve become dull with boredom and loss of hope. In an environment like that you can create a sports program, a play program where kids get the opportunity to run around, kick a ball and laugh. It’s just amazing the transformation this can have—kids no matter what their social situations or physical realities are, deserve an opportunity to be a kid and part of the opportunity to be a kid is the opportunity to play as a child plays, exploring their world and building their physical and mental and social capabilities.
“That’s actually how kids learn and when we take that away from kids and when we put them in an environment and say it’s not important and it’s not treasured, we’re taking away their childhood.”
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