Adios Auto! Children Have Legs

By Bettina Hauser, Future Perfect

“Going to school together helps children feel like part of a group”, says Antonio Moya, an architect by profession. He is one of the four masterminds behind the Pas a Pas (Step by Step) project in Jávea, which aims to give children an active role in urban life. Since April 2016, more than 100 children from four primary schools have been walking to school together in this town on Spain’s East coast. They have been joined in autumn by students from another two schools.

Traffic Just Needs to Be Put in its Place

By Rob Hopkins, Rob Hopkins blog

Playing in the street, the “really good thing” Jo and her neighbours stumbled across, has many benefits. Children need to play, it’s vital for their physical and emotional development.

Rewilding the Imagination

By Rob Hopkins, Rob Hopkins blog

It can’t be like “We need a policy for a rewilded childhood”, because we could be waiting forever, and that ain’t going to happen. And we haven’t got time to wait forever I don’t believe. So it’s what do we all do to rewild our own family, our own community, our own school?

Other than Mother? The Parenthood Decision with Resilience in Mind

By Kamalamani, Resilience.org

I’m happy to continue to have conversations about the parenthood decision and ‘otherness’ and to offer spaces for others to meet, because it strikes me that these conversations are at the heart of the sort of resilience we need and are increasingly likely to need in the coming decades - and because it’s the least I can do for the biosphere.

A Farm Breviary: Sext

By Brian Miller, South Roane Agrarian

The sadness and absurdity of thinking we have improved on the past by infantilizing our children, swaddled even into youth and young adulthood, their girth and limbs malformed, their intelligence maladapted to the work of being men and women.

Toys, Marketing, and when Barbie goes Bad

By Rob Hopkins, Rob Hopkins blog

First of all, we are at a moment when we’re in political crisis, we’re in ecological crisis, and the ability to imagine a different world, to imagine different solutions to the world we’ve created, to imagine different ways of dealing with the problems we have has never been more pressing.

Encouraging Place Attachment in Early Education

By Julie Blum, Project for Public Spaces

What makes a person feel a sense of belonging, meaning, and connection in a place?

Streetfacts #4: Children Have Lost the Freedom to Roam

By Clarence Eckerson, Jr, StreetFilms

The percentage of children walking and bicycling to school has plummeted from almost 50 percent in 1969 to about 13 percent today.

Resilience: Why so many parents today are getting it wrong

By Annie Lussenburg, Resilience.org

I’ve lost count of the number of articles I’ve read about the importance of developing resilience.  It’s mentioned all over the web and for good reason, as it's a critical coping mechanism.  Most of those articles however, are directed at developing resilience within the adult population.  Seldom, do we talk about how parents can and should create resilience in children, particularly when there are many parents out there who are doing the exact opposite of what’s required.  

A time of gifts

By Charlotte Du Cann, Charlotte Du Cann blog

I am in the woods outside Norwich on a January day with a gang of kids from Catton Grove, a huge primary school in a rough-and-tumble part of the city. I’m here as part of an arts and Transition teach-in, exploring peak oil and honey bees, reconnecting with nature and planting some of the apple varieties that used to grow in the Grove before it was tarmacked over.