This is my latest column, but it’s something that’s been on my mind a lot lately so I wanted to re-post it here.

When my 8- and 10-year olds were 3 and 1, we lived on the third floor of an apartment complex. That meant that every time we wanted to go outside, I had to schlep two kids up and down two flights of stairs, plus another flight of stairs on the outside of the building.

If we were going to the pool, I also had to carry towels, floaties and other water gear. If we were going for a walk, I had to get the stroller down those same stairs.

And I did this several times a day, every day, because my kids wanted so desperately to be outside. They’d stand with their noses pressed against the sliding-glass door overlooking the courtyard, looking depressed. Or they’d go out onto our little balcony until they made me too nervous because they seemed to be plotting a way to jump over the edge.

Something has definitely changed. As my kids have gotten older, they seem to have lost the drive to go outside. Not only does it almost never occur to them to go out of their own accord, but they frequently act as though I’m torturing them when I boot them out the door.

I know I’m not alone. Think back to your childhood: like me, I’m guessing a lot of you ran out (or were thrown out) the door shortly after breakfast on a sunny summer morning, not to return until lunch (or for a Popsicle break or to beg for ice cream money). Then you were back out until dinner.

After dinner you might get a couple more hours of play, finally turning in when your parents called you at dusk. Mosquito-bitten, scabby-kneed and filthy, you’d stumble home just to start it all again the next day. And if you were like me, you loved it that way.

But plenty of research has shown that not only do kids not play outdoors nearly as much as they used to, that that lack of physical activity and connection with nature is having a negative effect on their physical and mental health.

So what’s happened to kids? Why don’t they want to play outside?

A few theories have been thrown around. Kids are less likely to be at home during the day now, and are more likely to be in child care or after-school activities. When they are with their parents, their time is likely to be scheduled with sports, lessons and tutoring. That leaves less free time for riding bikes or playing kickball.

And you can’t underestimate the pull of the screen. Sure, when we were kids, there were cartoons on Saturday mornings and after-school specials to watch, and the occasional Disney movie that would keep you in on a Sunday night. But there were no 24-hour kids’ channels, no Internet, and not quite such an extensive array of game systems to keep you glued to a screen for most of the day.

The truth is, we parents are to blame for a lot of this. We let the kids zone out because it’s an easy way for us to keep tabs on them, we don’t want to argue with them. And it feels “safer” than letting them roam around outside.

We let them stay in because that’s where WE want to be - glued to our laptops and favorite programs. Kids aren’t just naturally losing the drive and desire to be outside. They’re learning it from us.

What’s the answer? There are a lot of little changes I’ve been implementing in our house to get the kids back into the great outdoors, but I’ve discovered that though I can lead the children to the yard, I can’t make them enjoy it when there’s nobody out there sharing it with them. The only way to do that is to get other kids playing outside, too, and make it seem like the happening place to be rather than in front of the computer or TV.

And the only way to do that might mean unplugging MYSELF, heading into the front yard with them, getting to know the parents in my community, and helping to create the kind of neighborhood I want my kids to grow up in.

It might mean going more than an hour without checking my e-mail sometimes, but I think I can deal. Our kids don’t know what they’re missing, but we do - and we may be the only ones who can help them discover it again.

What do you think? Are your kids playing outside less than you’d like? Have you come up with any creative ways to get them out the door again?

We’ve been making an effort to drive less lately. As it is, I go through less than a tank of gas every other week–I simply don’t go anywhere outside of a 10- or 15- block radius of our home more than once a week or so, and even then we’re usually talking a 10-15 minute drive, max. So the sky-high gas prices aren’t pinching us too much yet.

But since you never know what could happen ($10/gallon gas? Sudden complete breakdown of the family minivan with no room in the budget for a new one? Both entirely possible) driving less seems like a good thing to get used to. And that means tweaking my own personal definition of “within walking distance”. When we moved here, I mentally wrote off the train, grocery store and many restaurants (besides the strip on Devon Ave, which is fantastic if you’re in the mood for Indian, Pakistani, or other South Asian food, but doesn’t really seem like the place to find a club sandwich or croissant) as “too far to walk”. Many of those things were ten or twenty blocks away, which just seemed really…far.

But then I took a few minutes to Google-map the distances, and learned that Target and Jewel are exactly one mile away, while the Metra is 1.3 miles. Should I need to get somewhere not on the Metra line, the EL station is just .5 miles further, or 1.8 miles total. Not a hop, skip, and a jump, but about a 35-40 minute walk…not torture. Especially considering that it doubles as exercise.

So lately I’ve been walking a lot more. To the Metra when I need to get up to Evanston (it’s a 5-minute ride); to Target, to the grocery store. Jon and I went out to dinner last week, and we walked 1.4 miles each way to this fantastic Mexican restaurant on Clark street–with a cheap bottle of BYOB wine and $7 entrees, it was a cheap night–and as we chatted while we walked on a beautiful early-summer evening, it didn’t seem like a long walk at all.

I’m finding myself stretching my idea of walkable distances further and further as I think of places outside of the radius I’ve become comfortable with, and realize that driving is often more of a hassle than a convenience. After all, it would probably take me about 7-10 minutes to drive to the same places I can walk in 20-25, but I have to find a place to park, watch out for pedestrians, and feel the da-DUMP of a hundred speed bumps. Where else can I get on foot? To the beach? Exactly 2.0 miles–easy. To the yoga studio? “Only” 3 miles. What about the indie bookstore? Just 3.7!

The biggest obstacle right now is that my kids are all relatively young. I love a weekly or so outing sans kids, but on the whole, it’s not really practical or desirable for me to spend hours away from them running errands. And two of them still have to be carted around at least some of the time on longer trips after their little legs give out, and pushing two kids in a stroller can make a nice stroll downright exhausting. The bus ceases to be a cheap option when you take four kids on it with you, and it’s not exactly quick, either.

Maybe when all the kids are big enough that taking two hours away from them just to get to and from where I’m going isn’t a huge issue, I’ll walk, train, or bus it everywhere I go. For now, I’m just doing what I can and doing my best to toughen up. For instance, today I walked the two-mile round trip to Target and Jewel for groceries and a few odds and ends. My double stroller is fabulous, but when I’ve got both the little guys loaded in there, the thing easily weighs 75 lbs. And before I left, I forgot to factor in that adding:

a gallon of milk
a 16-oz container of yogurt
a 10-oz container of sour cream
two bags of dense granola
Applesauce
And various bags ‘o carbs

would mean I’d be pushing 100 pounds for a mile. As we left the store in the 2:30 sun and I struggled to steer the stroller, stopping every few minutes to refill Owen’s pretzel ‘tup’ and take a swig of water, I cursed my silly notion, but after a few blocks we steered onto a shady street, a breeze picked up, and I got into a groove. Twenty-five minutes later I was home: sweaty, but triumphant, and I think I may even have beefed up my triceps a bit. Sure, what might have been a quick run to the store took about an hour more time and a lot more effort. But hey, my pants have been fitting a little tight lately, and I’d rather walk to the store than hit the gym.

Going by this calorie burn calculator, I probably walked off 250 or so calories today, and I figure that earns me an extra glass of wine with dinner tonight. And if that’s not an incentive to hoof it, I don’t know what is.

I’ve been reading a lot about going car-free–partly in response to the painful gas prices, and partly for environmental reasons–and am wondering how people with multiple children, particularly those who don’t live right on a train line, pull it off. I stumbled across this post, for example, talking about how hard it can be to get a taxi to pick you up when you have a baby–and the blogger only has ONE child.

Anyway, I’m not turning our car in tomorrow or anything, but I’ve been thinking about ways to cut wayy back on our driving and keep running up against theoretical obstacles. I posted about them over at the Chicago Moms Blog. What do you think? Are you planning on cutting back on how much you drive, or finding alternative methods of transportation? Are you a car-free family already? If you have kids–particularly more than one–how do you manage it (or plan on managing it?)