16% said their children would rather do other things.32% of parents quote safety fears as the reason their children didn’t play out more often.‘X marks the spot where they ate six missionaries!’ Simon West, Sophie Neville, Suzanna Hamilton and Sten Grendon on Peel Island in the English Lake District.

While nine of ten parents recognise that it is vital for children to use their imaginations, 16 per cent of parents say they have no idea how to make up stories or create imaginative play. But only half their children lead the same active life.Īpparently parents have forgotten how to play with their kids.

One study found that eight in ten parents said their favourite activities as children involved being outdoors.

But 43 % of parents admitted they rely on school to ensure their children are getting plenty of time outdoors through PE and play times, and spend very little outdoor time with their children themselves.

54 % seriously worry their child doesn’t spend enough time playing outdoors.

44 % of parents wish their children played outdoors more often.

You’d have thought they must have had higher levels of vitamin D. Apparently only 21% children today play outside near their homes, as compared to 71% of their own parents when they were young. Kids today play outside for less than five hours a day at weekends and only for an hour or so during the week, which is half the time their parents spent outdoors, whatever the weather. When I appeared on Channel 5 last year I learnt the most depressing facts about the decline in the amount of time children spend outdoors. Recent research shows that children tend to stay indoors, watching television, playing computer games or even spend time doing homework, rather than go out to play. ‘If not duffers, won’t drown.’ Simon West, Sophie Neville and Suzanna Hamilton in ‘Swallows & Amazons’ (1974) Is this because the essence and appeal of the stories is that they occur beyond the confines of domestic realms? As it was, the longest one ended up on the cutting-room floor. When we made the film in 1973 it rained so much in the Lake District that the producer must have longed for the existence of a few more interior scenes. What strikes me about Arthur Ransome’s whole series of ‘Swallows and Amazons’ books is that they are set almost exclusively outside in the open – or afloat.

Amazons and swallows