A Great Depression for Kids

Not that I want this to be a Great Depression. I hope it's not. But if it is, there just might be one group of Americans that really benefits.

Kids.

I see kids emerging from their dens when they get sick of their Xbox games and their parents can't afford any new ones. I see kids dropping out of travel soccer when their parents can't afford the gas and playing a pickup game instead. I see kids figuring out how to retool their bikes and skates and maybe even their MP3 players when their parents can't immediately buy them the newest, niftiest models.

In other words, I see fancy toys and vacations and enrichment classes falling away. And the only thing left is … childhood.

And the only things left to play with are … other kids.

And sticks.

I know I have a tendency to romanticize the past — not to mention poverty. (And sticks.) And I suspect that for all the heady joy of feeling "grown-up" and responsible, helping the family pick peaches in Salinas, Calif., might not have been quite as fulfilling as it looked to a suburban girl reading "The Grapes of Wrath" on the patio while her dad grilled skirt steaks on the hibachi. (Thanks, Dad!)

Still, it can be argued that affluence has been really miserable for our kids. Easy money — or easy enough money — bought them all the stuff they used to make and do on their own. Professionally built treehouses. Ballgames organized by paid adults. Dance recitals with expensive costumes and slick DVDs at the end. Kids have been treated like grown-ups on a cruise, the kind where they sit back, relax and await the next pleasure.

For grown-ups, a cruise can be a lovely time of pampering and luxury. But for kids, when pampering becomes part of everyday life, it's a drain. Having Beauty Home Contractors build your treehouse is about as fulfilling as having Beauty Home Contractors run a race for you or steal your first kiss.

These are things kids should be doing on their own: falling, fearing, flailing, failing and eventually, in some manner, succeeding, even if the treehouse ends up half the size and twice as rickety as Beauty Home would have made it.

Same goes for fancy dance recitals, girls. If you always wait for the class and the videographer, you're going to miss a lot of fun.

The other day, I met a mom named Megan who just moved here from Vietnam. She's Canadian and spent a year in Hanoi with the U.N. Her family, like most well-off families there, immediately hired a maid, and the maid brought over her daughter, who was 9 — the same age as Megan's son.

"For the first few days, she was amazed at all the stuff we had," Megan said. Electronic stuff, mostly. "And then after a few days, it was, 'Well, that's interesting, but let's go out and play.' So out they went. That's just what they do. They play ."

What do they play with? "The cheapest junk. You give them a cheap, junky jump-rope and it breaks, and that's part of what you play with. Fixing it. They all want to imitate adults, so they crouch down and have a meeting with the other kids and figure out how they're going to fix it or solve the problem."

No caregiver is called in. No parent is shaken down for a better, sturdier toy. And somehow — yes, to my romanticized brain — that sounds like so much more fun than reaching Level Triple Z on any brand-new Nintendo game.

So while I don't want all our 401(k)s to dry up and I really don't want my kids to have to pick peaches for a living (although when the Joads fried dough for dinner, it always sounded delicious), there could be a silver lining to a worldwide financial meltdown.

Or if not silver, maybe plywood. Or frayed nylon. Or sticks! And that's good, too.

Lenore Skenazy is a columnist at Advertising Age. To find out more about Lenore Skenazy (lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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