People my age like to complain that kids don't go outside and play enough these days. We like to throw numbers around as a means of describing a national epidemic of playlessness among America's children. A crisis of fun.

There's the issue of obesity related to a lack of physical activity, of course, but it seems like the aspect that worries us most is that kids aren't enjoying themselves in exactly the way we did as children. We see them sitting around watching TV and despair that they can't spend their days swimming in the quaint fishing hole down by the crick or roaming around the neighborhood with a wagon collecting tin for the war effort- though, most of those memories probably comes from the thousands of afternoons we spent watching Little Rascals shorts.

The fact is that our kids are outside playing more than ever before. Their weekends are completely packed with stuff parents call "play," though there doesn't seem to be any evidence that they enjoy it as much as we seem to think they should. So, when it comes to killing an afternoon riding bikes through sprinkler wash kids don't seem terribly interested. However, if it's something that parents can structure, obsess over, rush around shouting "We're late! We're late!" then we do it in spades.

It comes down to the difference between a sport and a game. Kids play games among themselves. If your kid is really good at playing stickball in the alleyway with his buddies, you can't brag to your co-workers about it or fill his head with dreams of stickball scholarships. It's no good at all. Soprts are far better, say parents, because they come with an audience. As everyone knows, there's nothing better for building character and creating childhood memories than the presence of a gallery of adults shouting random instructions.

"COME ON! LET'S GO! YEAH! NO! THAT WAY! NO, THE OTHER WAY! IF YOU WANT TO MAKE THE MIDDLE SCHOOL TEAM, YOU HAVE TO PLAY WITH THE TRAVEL TEAM!!"

For these kids, this stopped being a game years ago. It's work. No wonder they spend whatever free time they have left plopped in front of the TV like Al Bundy.

I suspect that the real reason kids don't go outside and play on their own accord is that they believe that once they do, their parents will follow them out there and criticize their jump-roping technique or admonish them to concentrate on the follow-through when skipping rocks.

We love to supervise. We love to control. Otherwise, we've convinced ourselves, they'll get hurt. Yet, there is a practical element to our pathological desire to encase our children in soft, room-temperature packing foam. Healthcare is expensive.

It used to be that a dozen stitches or maybe a broken bone was the sign of a successful summer. These days the thought of a trip to the emergency room, with its $500 ambulance rides and $75 aspirins, seems like an unimaginable luxury. Only the rich kids get to play on the rope swing and risk a kick-ass compound fracture. The rest are stuck burning away their Saturdays practicing free-throws and golf swings in hopes of landing a scholarship so they can attend a decent college and listen to others tell stories of decadent childhood injuries.

Parents love nothing more than to suck the fun out of being a kid. And why not? Treating our kids like fleshy marionettes is one of the few joys we have left in this world. Maybe it's a good thing that we prepare our children for their stale, unsatisfying adult lives. We let them down easy, soften the blow.

With any luck, they'll build up enough resentment and shame to feel the need to do it to their own offspring in the fullness of time. The circle of life.