Writing New York

The other day when I picked up James, the boy that I care for three afternoons a week, I noticed that despite the cold temperatures, it was 25 degrees, he wasn’t wearing more than one shirt under his jacket, and he was without a hat, a scarf and gloves. I asked him about it, and he said he was fine. It made me wonder about lunch recess. Don’t the children play outside after lunch? Will they not be cold if that’s all they’re wearing when they play outside? I asked him about it and he said, “We don’t go out when it’s cold, or when it’s raining outside.” I was more than surprised. I was shocked. Whatever happened to “dress according to the weather report”? I later asked his older sister and my husband about it, who both were not surprised at all. Their responses were something like, “Of course, it’s cold outside.” I started looking into different schools’ policies regarding recess during the winter months and came across an article in The New York Times discussing exactly that. In other places around the country, outdoor recess gets canceled when the temperature drops below -20degrees. Maybe it’s me who is overreacting; I grew up in Sweden and the winter months are both long and cold. Despite that, we were never allowed to stay inside during recess. But the fact is that child obesity is a very big concern in this country and I think that a little daily exercise could really help to lower the number of obese children, which for me makes this an important issue to write about. This incident is not at all isolated to the schools in the East Village, but I bent the rules a little. I’m going to continue looking into this to see if there is a pattern in other schools around the city as well and to try to find out why the children are not let out to play when it gets a little cold.