LET KIDS HAVE RECESS OUTSIDE IN WINTER.

• Author: Skenazy, Lenore

IN AMERICA, YOU can grow up a brave, blustering bear of a kid ready for anything nature unleashes, or a sallow, soft sad-sack of a sniffler afraid of the first flake, and it may all depend on one thing: Your school's outdoor recess policy.

Consider the fact that one mom from Fairbanks, Alaska, told me that outdoor time gets canceled there only when it hits 20 below zero, while in Corpus Christi, Texas, another mom said her son's kindergarten class had to stay inside when it dipped below 60. Brrrr.

"I live in Washington state and moved to a new school district," April Doiron wrote to my Facebook page when I asked about local weather policies. (Hundreds of parents responded to the query.) "I was showing up to volunteer just as they were announcing indoor recess. The weather was sunny, dry and cold. I asked the front desk why it was indoor recess and they said it was because it was below freezing. I was a little shocked and a whole lot mad. It was literally in the upper 20s."

The freezing point does seem to be a line in the mercury for many schools, a fact that drives Erin Stone McLaughlin in Columbus, Ohio, crazy. One day early this year, her 8-year-old son told her, "I just can't stand sitting in a chair all day! I was made to be outside and work!"

I called Erin, who is a teacher as well as a mom of two, and she said that the school where she works sometimes cancels recess if it's cold because some of the kids can't afford warm winter clothes. But her school also cancels recess if it's too hot and sunny--something that has already happened once this school year. "Because the [ultraviolet] index was high, they thought the kids would get sunburned. And of course you can't have sunscreen or anything like that because it's considered a medication." So the kids stayed in.

Dawn, the mom who called me from Corpus Christi, could not believe how often her son's kindergarten canceled recess. She told the principal that he should know better than anyone that her ADHD son needed to get out and run around--"He's in your office every day!" No dice...