"Play" Is The Thing
Silken Laumann’s rallying cry to get kids active
is hitting home.
by Sophie Kneisel

Virtually every day, Silken Laumann is reminded of how she inspired people with her unbelievably brave bronze-medal performance at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. A mere 10 weeks after suffering what was considered a career-ending accident, she not only competed, but finished third in her single sculls event.

“A day doesn’t go by that somebody doesn’t talk to me about the Olympics and how I’ve inspired them,” says Laumann. People approach her in the grocery store, at public appearances, wherever she happens to be, to tell her what her battle for the bronze medal meant to them or to relate their stories of challenges they have overcome.

With the launch of her “Active Kids” movement, Laumann has taken on a new battle, one that involves inspiring Canadian parents, teachers and community members to take some simple steps to vastly improve the lives of our children. How? By working together to create opportunities for kids to be physically active through play – at home, at school and in neighborhoods. The payback: happier and healthier kids and safer communities.

Seeds planted during walk

The seeds of Laumann’s Active Kids movement, which she founded in 2004, were planted during an after-dinner walk with her two young children. Reminded of the noisy, kid-dominated Mississauga streets and parks of her youth by the sight of a lone ball-hockey player, Laumann started to questionthe unnatural quiet of her neighbourhood in Victoria. Aware that her community was not unique, she knew moving away wasn’t the answer.

As she writes in her recent book, Child’s Play, “The idea, when it came, was so simple: if I wanted my kids to play in the park, why not invite some local kids to come and play with them one night a week? Surely I could find a few other willing parents to help me supervise…I found I was met with considerable enthusiasm.”

Spurring Laumann on were shocking statistics about the poor physical condition of Canadian kids. As she wrote in a Globe & Mail article earlier this year, “[A]lmost 40 per cent of kids are overweight and, I would argue, a lot of kids are becoming increasingly depressed, stressed and disengaged. A large part of the problem is a lack of physical activity, says Laumann. She points out that in the past, “creative, self-organizing, unstructered play is where most of us were physically active.”

Laumann decided to spread the word about her “simple” idea. She developed a vision for “a national ‘Play in the Park’ day where each Wednesday Canadians across the country supervise our parks, school playing fields and gyms to allow children to experience the joy of unstructured play.” Thus, Active Kids was born – a practical, down-to-earth rallying cry to get kids moving for their mental and physical well-being.

“Active Kids is all about inspiring [and] giving people who want to take action some tools to do it,” says Laumann. Those tools can be found on the Active Kids website, www.silkensactivekids.ca, and include step-by-step guidelines for starting a neighbourhood Play in the Park day and a community Play in the Park day, games, resources, inspirational stories and advice on how parents, schools and communities can get kids active. The website is also the means by which people can connect with likeminded people in their own community to form Community Action Networks.

Part and parcel of getting kids active, says Laumann, is to create safer communities. Fear about what can happen to their children often makes parents keep a tight hold on them. “I just couldn’t accept that my kids would never be able to walk to school alone, or ride their bikes with their friends, or explore the park together,” Laumann writes. “The independence and joy my children would gain from the freedom to explore their community is so precious I knew I simply had to do something to make it possible.”

“We have to fight to bring this back, not just say, ‘Too bad they can’t do what we did,’” Laumann argues. “People are parenting from a place of fear. It’s not a healthy, positive place to do anything from,” she says, pointing out that statistically, there’s very little likelihood of kids being abducted from a neighbourhood park. “Look at the bigger picture: we might be keeping our kids safe, but we’re not keeping them well. Let’s find a balance between the two.”

Judging by the success stories on the website, many communities across Canada are finding that balance through neighborhood Play in the Park days, school board initiatives and Community Action Networks. Our area is one of them.

School board takes action

About the time that Active Kids was created, Laumann came to lend her support to Peterborough after the devastating summer flood of 2004. During what turned into a five-day visit to the area, Laumann spoke about her Active Kids movement to 800 teachers from the Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board at an education conference, to teachers and students at Peterborough’s Crestwood Secondary School and to senior administrators in smaller groups. “It’s a really special district,” says Laumann. “They really heard what I was saying about teaching to the whole child – not just their minds, but their bodies and souls – teaching in a holistic way. They just ran with it, and said, ‘We could do this better.’”

The board committed to providing an additional 20 minutes of physical activity a day, which has since become Ministry of Education policy. Laumann was so impressed with the board’s response that she mentions it on her website as well as in her book, for which the board prepared a lengthy forward that appears in 1,000 special editions.

Since Laumann’s visit, the board has been working on ways to “get kids moving instead of sitting all day,” says Diahne Graham, the board’s health and physical education consultant. Whether that activity comes as part of a literacy program – by getting kids to act out what is being read to them – or by taking the class into the hall or outdoors, Graham is trying to help teachers “think outside the box.”

Laumann’s visit also spawned the Crestwood Community Action Network in Peterborough. At Crestwood Secondary School, teacher Larry Pearson had been working on an idea similar to the Active Kids’ Play in the Park concept. Working with Melanie Foulkes, the school’s vice-principal and the coordinator of the network, Pearson applied Silken’s ideas the following spring. His students developed and organized games, and provided supervision and equipment for a morning of play for several hundred children at Jackson’s Park in Peterborough. The event was held again this past May, and other high schools in Peterborough are now considering similar projects.

“Using [Laumann’s] name, you get a lot more people out,” says Foulkes. While the school’s events have been the network’s main focus, she has also organized informal play in the park times in her community. “Silken had a real effect on me and a lot of the female staff,” Foulkes says. “She made us reflect on how we prioritize physical activity.”

School boards and health units across the province are now partnering to improve children’s level of fitness: “Everyone has acknowledged we need to help get kids active and we need to help parents get their kids active,” says Foulkes.

Momentum building

Child’s Play, which made the national bestseller list in its first week on sale, is creating a lot of momentum for the fledgling movement. And judging by the interest in joining Community Action Networks (there are 120 now), this is just the beginning of a major growth spurt.

“For the first year or two, we’ve just been trying to figure out what we need to do and how we can be effective,” says Laumann. “(But) there are not many places I’ve been where I feel like this message is not resonating.”

On a personal level, Laumann says being a participant in her own “movement” in her own community is like living an experiment. She is discovering first hand what works and what doesn’t. The rainiest winter months on the west coast don’t work for playing in the park, it turns out. She also knows she wants to start small, with walking a few kids to school and setting up “Games on the Green” at the local school before working on opening the school gym for play time during the winter and organizing bigger gatherings at fields several miles away.

“The proof that change is possible is all around us,” Laumann writes. “[And] change is not only possible, it is happening, and it is the only option. There are all sorts of people like you and me who have said, ‘This is simply not good enough for our children.’ We must do better on behalf of our kids; we can make their world a healthier, better place.”

Sophie Kneisel is a freelance writer living in Baltimore.