Nothing for older kids to do

by Amy
(Pennsylvania)

Visitor Question: I looked at your community improvement ideas, but our problem is something different.

We need something for the kids to do. Once they get to about 10 years old, they don't want to be on the swing set in our little poorly run park. There's nothing else for them to do around here except run wild on the streets.

This is a neighborhood with a lot of challenges, and I think it's really dangerous for the kids and teenagers to be out running around all the time doing nothing but playing their music loud and trying to impress each other and the opposite sex. This doesn't help the drug situation either.

It follows that our little neighborhood group, about three blocks of OK housing is all, really can't afford to provide any recreation, even for our own children, let alone those that come in from close neighborhoods. What do other neighborhoods do?

Editors Reply: This is a pretty common complaint. Indeed we agree this is a big problem that ideally you should try to solve.

Here's our first idea. Ask the kids themselves what they would like to do. Usually their answers are unrealistic ones; either they want something that would be very expensive to provide (such as a recreation center open 24 hours a day) or something that adults feel will create more problems than it solves.

However, let them express themselves, and don't be too quick to tell them why what they want is impractical. Yes, that same day you must explain that you really don't have any money to build a big rec plex, but let them develop that idea. This way, when you say we cannot afford that, you and they may be able to problem solve together to figure out how to provide some activity that they have pinpointed as ideal for their Mega Recreation Center.

I've even seen one neighborhood where the adults said fine, why don't you do some internet research to find out how much your 80,000 square foot building would cost just to build. Teens could do that. Then this neighborhood said OK, get back online to see how much a recreation supervisor makes in a year. The younger set also found that out. At that point the neighborhood leaders said please figure out how much would we have to raise taxes on each household to build the center and what rate increase would be required to hire a supervisor, or several supervisors if you want this center to be open long hours a day.

By this time at least the older teens were able to see and call out how impractical this was. Then they were more open to asking a church to leave open their basement after school until 9 p.m. and to provide a ping-pong table there.

I lost track of what happened in this neighborhood after that, but if the ping-pong was a success, I bet it wasn't long before the church was leaving cookies, and then in a few months I can imagine realistically that another church said we'll make room for dancing on Tuesday night when the church is open for other activities.

In this fashion I can envision a community pulling together to find things for older children and teenagers to do.

Sit down and make a list of all of the assets in your community, such as churches, schools, nonprofit organization headquarters, parks, athletic fields, trails, streams, and businesses that might have some spaces for getting together. Begin to engage with the keepers of each of these spaces to see what they can contribute.

To keep the children busy while you are having all these conversations and negotiations, ask them to think up a name for this project and then to design a logo for it. When both adults and teens are happy with the result, have the teens start putting social media behind the effort and vlogging the progress. This in itself will fight boredom and provide constructive alternatives to getting into trouble.

Your question begs for an asset-based community development approach. See our page about to read about that mindset.

With some resourcefulness and with treating the children themselves as co-creators worthy of your respect, you can make some inroads into resolving this common problem.

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