What happened to childhood?

As Corbin and I have been preparing to welcome a new baby into our family, I’ve been reflecting on what I loved from my own childhood. For me, the magic of being a kid was inextricably linked with creative imaginative play. I was blessed to be the oldest of three kids. Our sibling dynamic felt similar to the Lost Boys in Neverland. As the leader of the gang, I was Peter Pan through and through, abhorring the thought of growing up.

We lived in Virginia for a few years, then lived with my grandparents before eventually settling in Utah. Each place was a different stage for my and my siblings’ many creative escapades. In Virginia, we created little mouse houses and tree forts in the yard. I remember the tasty honeysuckle flowers, falling in love with a katydid, and trying to catch fireflies. It was a magical place to be a kid.

We then moved in with my grandparents on their large craggy property. We spent most days playing in the apricot orchard with two horses, exploring the deep fault line behind their house, sending boats down the stream, and climbing the apple tree. My personal “monster under the bed” was the thought of falling in my grandparents’ well, a scenario of which my mom loved to remind us. The untamed hollow behind their house was full of mystery and danger. As far as we were concerned, there were definitely magical creatures in the bushes, and we hunted for them endlessly.

When we moved to Park City, our games changed to neighborhood-wide capture the flag tournaments and endless binocular-clad, tree-climbing spy sessions. Our imaginative play always included climbing to a hard-to-reach place. We even climbed onto our neighbors’ roofs, walkie talkies in hand, always praying some sort of neighborhood mystery would fall into our laps. 

I was obsessed with the idea of exclusive clubs and secret societies. Among our many clubs were Spy Club, Dragon Club, Outdoor Club, and Hogwarts. 

Hogwarts was the most elaborate. I organized an intense wizard curriculum, complete with binders, homework assignments, and exams. We each had a “school locker” where we stored all our wizard supplies, and a name tag bearing our special wizard name. We told the future with a snow globe, fashioned wands out of sticks, and learned to write in Ancient Runes. Potions class consisted of food coloring and mysterious candy sludge. But the best was Astronomy. Parked in front of my parents’ portable DVD player, we’d watch a National Geographic movie about the Solar System, pressing “pause” every couple minutes to take notes. We'd then turn our notes into huge posters about the planets. It was homeschool disguised as Hogwarts.

My Harry Potter phase ran so deep I even printed a regular family newspaper called “The Daily Prophet.” I’d roll it up, tie it with twine, and deliver it outside my siblings’ and parents’ bedroom doors every week. For a kid, filling a multi-page newspaper with true “family news” articles was hard work, so I invented most of the stories. One of my best told the urgent account of a driver who crashed their car on I-80 because they “got distracted by their windshield wipers.” The paper also featured a regular section called “Mom News,” where I’d interview my mom and ask her what announcements she wanted to make to the kids. They usually read: “Mom wants us to mind her.”

I’m a firm believer that constraints foster creativity. I’m constantly thinking about constraints as I work and regularly use them to improve my art. Imaginative play follows these same laws because imaginative play is no different from thinking creatively.

The magic of my childhood was largely influenced by one important constraint: lack of screens. In each house we lived, we had easy access to the outdoors and virtually no access to TV, video games, or computers. My creative solution to this constraint? Outdoor imaginative play. Our most important childhood toys were open-ended objects like empty cardboard boxes, walkie talkies, sewing supplies, buckets and rope, paint, bikes, and a camera.

Growing up, I'd watch my mom chat with her friends for what seemed like hours on her pink flip phone, we'd repeat-watch Star Wars on VHS for movie night (no I'm still not sick of it), and my distraction of choice at church meetings and restaurants was a wide-ruled composition notebook and my marker collection.

Nowadays, technology is a lot more dominating. Today's moms connect with friends by scrolling Instagram, rather than gossiping on their flip phones. The small family VHS collection is now replaced with endless movies provided by streaming services. And notebooks aren’t nearly as interesting as iPads.

I worry that my kids will never know the frustration of staring at a blank page, boredom on a Saturday afternoon, or unsupervised outdoor adventure. The insidious thing about technology is it steals the creative constraints you didn't even know you had.

One day while living in Virginia, I called my dad at work declaring, “Daddy, I’m bored.”

“Well, why don’t you use your imagination?” He asked.

“My imagination’s broken,” I declared.

Nowadays, it would be easy for my mom to have turned on the TV to quiet my complaining. But as a kid without TV, I had to dig a little deeper and create something fun to do with my siblings.

As technology and convenience continue to create consumers earlier and earlier, the future will belong to those who can think creatively, even when it doesn’t come easily. While I realize going 100% screen-free isn’t realistic or practical (as I’m writing this on my laptop), I challenge you to think about your technology usage. What fraction of your technology time is spent creating? How much is spent consuming?

Thanks for reading!