7 . At the start of every vacation, many parents spend their time wondering: What will the children do? When I was a child in the 1950s, the answer was easy. The children would play. We played feely with other children, in our own chosen ways, away from adults. When we got bored, we found ways to overcome it. We took up _________, took risks, sometimes hurt ourselves, got into trouble, and _________ how to get out of it.
During such play, we acquired knowledge and skills that couldn’t be taught to us in school. We learned how to take _________, make our own decisions, solve our own problems, get along with peers as equals, experience fear and then find ways to manage it, experience anger and then find ways to overcome it. We also discovered our interests, _________ them, and became skilled at them—interests that for many of us later became _________.
Over the past 60 years, however, we’ve seen a huge _________ in children’s freedom and opportunity to play on their own. Over this same period, we’ve also seen a dramatic increase in the rates of _________ and anxiety disorders among young people- five to eight times what they were in the 1950s.
Our children love to play in moderately _________ ways. Through such play, they acquire the physical, social and emotional capacities required for healthy development. They learn to get along with one another by playing socially, and they learn to deal with emergencies by playing in ways that involve risk.
Why is such play so _________? It can cause injury, so why hasn’t natural selection __________ the inner desire for it? We have some clues from laboratory experiments.
Researchers have found that when young rats or monkeys are deprived (剥夺) of play during critical periods in their development, the animals grow up as emotional cripples (跛者). They are __________ disabled when placed in new, slightly frightening environments to which normally raised animals would __________. They repeated between incapacitating fear and inappropriate aggression when placed with __________ peers. So it is no surprise to me that play-deprived human children grow up insufficient in the social and emotional skills required to deal well with life’s inevitable stressors (应激源). They may also grow up __________ the abilities to think creatively, take initiative, and assume responsibility.
We have deprived children of free, risky play, probably for their own good. In the process we have denied them the opportunity to learn how to be __________ by playing in risky ways.
Our children need more freedom, not more adult control.
1. | A．expeditions | B．adventures | C．violence | D．disasters |
2. | A．figured out | B．looked over | C．made for | D．turned out |
3. | A．measures | B．action | C．initiative | D．risks |
4. | A．created | B．pursued | C．captured | D．demonstrated |
5. | A．addictions | B．predictions | C．expectations | D．careers |
6. | A．increase | B．amount | C．decline | D．demand |
7. | A．depression | B．obesity | C．digestion | D．cancer |
8. | A．friendly | B．funny | C．risky | D．learned |
9. | A．dangerous | B．frustrating | C．striking | D．appealing |
10. | A．strengthened | B．eliminated | C．multiplied | D．identified |
11. | A．psychologically | B．physically | C．medically | D．biologically |
12. | A．devote | B．stick | C．adapt | D．seek |
13. | A．identical | B．modest | C．miserable | D．unfamiliar |
14. | A．missing | B．involving | C．lacking | D．showing |
15. | A．obedient | B．adaptable | C．optimistic | D．practical |
