Today, we went shopping for rain gear, and we got some great stuff.  I can now cover him, head-to-toe, with excellent, comfortable rain gear.  He now has no excuses for refusing to play in the rain.

I’m very happy we’ve been doing this.  Kids don’t dislike being in the rain unless adults teach them to dislike it.  I want Marco to go outside any day, regardless of the weather.

In the last week since the rain started here, my four-year-old son Marco and I have played in the rain twice.  First, on a day when the rains were coming down so hard our street formed enormous puddles, Marco and I put on boots and splashed around.  I had forgotten how much fun sloshing around in puddles could be.

While both are Reggio-Emilia inspired, LPSI is run by people who went to the best Reggio-Emilia schools in the world - in the Emilia Romagna region of Italy.  Bing is run by people who have studied this approach from Stanford University in the United States.  So, LPSI has the Reggio approach running through its veins more than Bing, and it works fabulously.  This fact is quite evident in the video.
LPSI is small and family-like, while Bing is much larger and laboratory-like.  Classes at LPSI have 12 students each, while classes at Bing have 36.  Kids get to know each other much better at LPSI, and teachers (and administrators and cooks!) regularly hug and kiss the kids.
LPSI has a cultural/linguistic theme, while Bing doesn’t.  That cultural/linguistic theme is Italian, and it gives the whole community more of a unifying purpose than just a great preschool.  Thus, the parents, Italians and non-Italians included, form an exceptionally tight community.  The school is not just about the kids.  It’s about the kids and Italian language and Italian culture.  If you care at all for the latter two, having this theme creates more bonds among parents, kids, teachers, and administrators.
LPSI is Italian.  Yes, I’m Italian-American, but even if you’re not, you’ll have to admit that Italian language and culture are pretty wonderful, aren’t they?  Besides, what other preschool can boast that they have their own cooks from Italy who cook gourmet organic Italian lunches for students (and staff) every day?

LPSI, flush from the success of their fundraiser last weekend, is considering expansion, either to a K-8 school in San Francisco or to another preschool in Palo Alto or elsewhere in the Bay Area.  I vote for the latter.  How about you?
[EDITOR’S NOTE: I’ve been out of it for two weeks.  I had hip resurfacing surgery back on March 26, then I was swamped working on the video below.  I’m doing very well now, limping but doing just about everything again.  I’m sorry for the hiatus, but I’m back, stronger (and more cantankerous) than ever...]

I just shot and edited the video below about La Piccola Scuola Italiana (LPSI), a wonderful Reggio-Emilia inspired preschool in San Francisco.  I am very happy with my son’s preschool, Bing Nursery School, one of the most prestigious, sought-after nursery schools in the US.  However, I prefer LPSI.  Unfortunately, we live in Palo Alto, CA, 40 minutes away from LPSI.

Why do I prefer LPSI to Bing?

details about the home
a form to submit a review of the neighborhood around the home
Neighborhood Reviews, if any have been submitted

Also, note that the “Neighborhood Reviews” located below the map lists all homes for sale in text.

Since we recently launched this feature, we need reviews!  Once we have many reviews, this site will become a valuable resource for families seeking homes in Playborhoods.

So, why would you submit a Neighborhood Review?  Well, you may live close to the home for sale, and you may want another family with kids your kids’ ages to move in there.  Or, you may be house hunting and you may want to help out other house hunters.  Or, you may be a real estate agent or other person knowledgeable about neighborhoods, and you would like to help families who are seeking a Playborhood.

Whatever your reason, we could really use your help!

I also look for family cars like SUVs and minivans, and I try to see car seats in the back of all cars, but particularly those. 

If I see zero evidence of kids around the house for sale, I often just leave (life’s too short...), but if I have reason to believe that kids live there, I’ll try to strike up a conversation with *anyone* who’s outside, preferably one who has a kid around.  If no one happens to be outside (not a good sign...), I’ll go to the house of the closest neighbor that has some sign of kids in its yard and ring the doorbell.

Once I get a neighbor’s attention, I say something like the following, “Hi.  My wife and I are interested in buying that house over there, and it’s very important to us that our kids - two boys, 3-1/2 and 5 months - play with other kids outside in the neighborhood wherever we move.  Can you tell me if there are other kids around here those ages?”

If the person is reluctant to answer, that’s a bad sign.  I’m interested in moving into a neighborhood with friendly people who want neighbors like me. 

Once the person starts answering, if he or she is friendly and forthcoming, I try to get as much information the kid population as possible (with some people, it takes a couple of tries to get all the info), and then I ask whether they play outside with other kids.

Of course, as the neighbor tells me things, I tell him or her about my family and why that neighborhood might be a fit for us.  The person should know that I have a sincere interest in the home and the neighborhood, and that I’m an enthusiastic, friendly neighbor looking for an enthusiastic, friendly neighborhood.  In other words, this conversation is also an opportunity to see if I connect with that neighbor. 

If I find out there are lots of kids my kids’ ages living there, I’m interested.  If I find that the kids who are there play a lot outside, I’m also interested.  If both of these facts are true - i.e. lots of kids my kids’ ages play outside there, I’m very interested, but either one of these alone might be good enough.  You should realize that when you move in, you’ll be able to change the complexion of the neighborhood.

If, after all this research, the neighborhood meets my minimum standard (for me, the number of kids my kids’ ages is primary, then outdoor play is a close second), I’ll try to get inside to see the house.  However, I never walk in to see 90% of the houses whose neighborhoods I visit to check out.

Of course, all this “Guerilla Playborhood Hunting” is very time consuming.  It’s unfortunate that it is, but the real estate market is failing those of us who make neighborhood for kids our #1 priority.  Neighborhood Reviews is Playborhood’s first step in making this easier.  Stay tuned…
[NOTE:  This the last in a series of four articles on Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques.  The first article is an introduction to the topic, the second is about researching neighborhood reputations, and the third describes how I research online information about neighbors of a house for sale.]

If the larger neighborhood reputation and my online searching give me a pretty decent feeling about the immediate neighborhood around a house, I’ll visit there to look around and talk to neighbors.  After all, for getting a feeling for a neighborhood, there’s no substitute for talking to neighbors in person and seeing what they actually do.

I’ve found that the best time to go - i.e. the best time to see kids play outside - is late afternoon, between 4 and 5:30, any day.  I’ll go earlier during the winter, when the sun goes down early, and perhaps a bit later during the longest and hottest days of summer.  Nothing is a better indicator of the potential of your kids playing in a neighborhood than seeing kids your kids’ ages playing there when you visit.  So, as soon as I see this, without looking any further, the house becomes a candidate for purchase.

Of course, 4) is a direct way to get the occupant’s age, but it’s often not available.  Age of occupant is a decent indicator of whether children of a particular age live there.  There are no rules, but, for instance, a woman of 45 is unlikely to have a baby living with her, but in certain areas she’s fairly likely to have an older elementary, middle school, or high school student living with her.

4) and 1) together can serve as a fairly strong indication that kids live in the house.  For instance, if the house has an occupant male and/or female about 35, and they just bought the house three years ago, you can almost bet that at least one preschooler lives there.

Lastly, 1) by itself is an indication of how old kids are, if they do indeed live there.  For instance, someone who bought a house in 1990 is unlikely to have pre-schoolers, but they may well have high schoolers.  Conversely, someone who bought in 2004 may very well have pre-schoolers, but they’re much less likely to have high schoolers.
[NOTE:  This the third in a series of four articles on Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques.  The first article is an introduction to the topic, the second is about researching neighborhood reputations, and the fourth discusses what to look for and do when visiting a neighborhood around a home for sale.]

Because driving to a house for sale and nosing around there takes a lot of time, I search publicly available online information on close neighbors first to get some indication of whether kids my kids’ ages might be living there.  After all, from kids’ point of view, preschoolers in particular, next-door neighbors are by far the most important, so if I can find that at least one kid my kids’ ages lives next-door, that makes it likely that I’ll spend the time to visit the house and neighborhood to get more information.

Be forewarned: the methods I describe here seem invasive, but I’m only searching for publicly available information, and I’m doing it for a noble cause - to find neighborhood playmates for my kids.

So here’s what I do:

In the meantime, you should start by reading every one of those local “Neighborhood Profiles” that you can because there might be some useful (albeit overly-rosy) information in there.  Then, you should talk to local realtors and residents from the different neighborhoods, asking very specific questions. 

I ask questions like the following:

Do your kids ever play outside on their own (unsupervised)?  If they do, how often do they do this?  With how many kids?
Where do your kids’ friends live?  (If none of their friends are on the same street, that’s a bad sign.)
Let’s say you’re driving down your street one afternoon.  What’s the probability that you’ll see kids playing in their front yards or on the street?  What might they be doing?
Do kids walk to school in your neighborhood?  What percentage, would you say, so?  What ages?  At what age do kids walk without parents?

Questions like these help you get the “real poop” on a neighborhood.  Ideally, you should ask multiple people in a neighborhood these questions.  Only then do you get a real clear sense of whether the neighborhood is a place were kids play outside or not.

Even if you do get pretty good information on neighborhoods, another fact limits its usefulness significantly.  When most people talk about a “neighborhood,” they’re referring to a community of at least a hundred homes, sometimes over a thousand.  However, the neighbors who really matter to kids are within a very small radius of their home - perhaps up to five houses in either direction.  Furthermore, next-door neighbors are by far most important, followed by houses across the street and two houses down, and so on.

So, when most people talk about how a “neighborhood” is good for kids, they’re generalizing too far.  It is true that College Terrace in Palo Alto, for instance, has a well-deserved reputation for children playing outside, so there are many pockets there were this happens.  However, if you have babies and toddlers and you move into a house there surrounded by families with older kids and empty-nesters, your kids will not have neighborhood play opportunities, regardless of how good the “neighborhood” is for kids.

I would say that the probability that your child will have these opportunities is better for a random house in College Terrace than in, say, Old Palo Alto, but you still need to find out about the particular block that houses for sale are on.

That’s what I’ll be presenting in the final two articles in this series on Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques. Next, I’ll discuss how to research online the possibility that potential playmates for your children live in houses neighboring the house for sale, and in my final article, I’ll talk about how to learn about the potential for children’s play from an in-person visit.
[NOTE:  This the second in a series of four articles on Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques.  The first article is an introduction to the topic.]

Why is researching neighborhood reputations a “guerilla Playborhood hunting technique?” Isn’t this something everyone does?

Well, as it turns out, accurate neighborhood reputations are not easy to find, so doing a good job of this requires some active research.  In The Hubris of Neighborhood Profiles I wrote last year about how neighborhood guides, or at least the one for Palo Alto compiled by the Palo Alto Weekly, are not critical enough.  Every neighborhood gets a great review.

I also find that realtors’ pronouncements about neighborhoods are too uniformly rosy.  Some good realtors will give you some useful critical information, but on the whole, realtors will oversell neighborhoods even more than they oversell houses. 

In addition, I’ve found that parents’ casual comments about the quality of kids’ lives in a neighborhood aren’t very useful.  They almost always say wherever they live is “great” for their kids.  In order to get a useful information, you need to ask very specific questions.

That’s analogous to what used to happen to my wife and me countless times when we went house hunting over the past two years.  We’d go to see houses that have good “locations,” nice photos and the right numbers of bedrooms and baths, only to discover almost every time that the neighborhood would be dead boring for our kids. 

So, over these past two years, we’ve gotten smarter by necessity.  It’s been painful because we’ve had to invent guerilla Playborhood hunting techniques on our own.  In this series of articles, I’ll share our techniques, scrappy and unconventional as they are. 

In the meantime, we’ll be providing tools to make it even easier on Playborhood Local sites.  The first of these is Neighborhood Reviews (for instance, see the Playborhood Palo Alto / Menlo Park Neighborhood Reviews page.  In these Reviews, users can rate a neighborhood around a house for sale from one to five stars, and they can describe the kid population, their frequency of outdoor play, and community among adults there.  Unfortunately, it will take some time before we get enough Neighborhood Reviews to make our guerilla househunting techniques obsolete.

So, what are these guerilla househunting techniques that help us to avoid those “worthless first dates?” In the three upcoming articles on this topic, I’ll share three levels of research I use to hunt for Playborhoods, starting with the most superficial:  1) researching neighborhood reputation, 2) searching about neighbors of a home for sale online, and 3) visit the neighborhood and talk to neighbors.

[NOTE:  This the first in a series of four articles on Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques.]

My wife and I have made “Neighborhood for Kids” - i.e. a Playborhood - our #1 criterion in searching for a home in Palo Alto and Menlo Park.  Think about that for a moment.  It makes searching for a house extremely difficult, given the information that the real estate industry provides us.

Basically, all that stuff other than price that we see on all the real estate sites and the newspapers is useless to us before we find a house in a neighborhood we like.  Architectural style?  Whatever.  Bedrooms, baths, and square footage?  All that may be important, but it’s *secondary*.  None of these things can give our kids a good life like a Playborhood can.

I don’t know if it’s the curse of having too much information available, some sort of pressure by proximity, or just natural parenting paranoia, but I decided there was no harm in exploring all of our options.  I began touring local schools and trolling web sites trying to find the right place for my daughter and our family, where she will have the opportunity to thrive and learn in an environment most conducive to her personality as well as our wishes for her development and enjoyment.  We got on three more waiting lists.  Then I left it alone for a while and the past few months, I began to research it further as the schools began their admissions process.  (Our daughter is now two.)

I’d rather not share specifics of what schools we applied to or where we’ve been offered spots, but I will say that the experience has been more challenging than I expected because there’s no obvious choice.  Some programs are morning-only; some are afternoon-only.  Some provide additional language instruction, but most do not.  Some have religious instruction where others don’t acknowledge holidays or children’s birthdays.  Some allow or encourage parent participation in the classroom, others don’t.  Some are only for a couple of hours, and some go all day.  Some have specific food restrictions where others allow everything.  All of the programs we selected have safe, nurturing play environments for the children and they are all well-recommended from members of the community.

So let’s say our daughter starts at one of these schools that’s largely based on play, she thrives in that environment, and then it’s time for her to transition to kindergarten.  At one of the tours I was on recently, a parent asked “what then?” How do the kids transition from a largely play-focused, self-directed environment to a more structured sit-down classroom setting?  Of course the administrators at the school said the kids seem to do fine.  Children adapt.  It all works out.  But what if it doesn’t?

I dug a bit farther, began asking other local parents what they thought about this.  Some had actually found that their kids did better in structured environments after trying the play-based preschools, so they moved them.  One parent said her son loved it, but her daughter did better elsewhere.  Others loved the play-based schools so much that they chose a progressive, individualized private school for when their children transitioned into kindergarten through eighth grade.  And yes, I’m getting way ahead of myself here, but then what?  Then, it seems, the kids tend to do fine at the local public high school or secondary private schools, but half are split off from their friends.  I’ve been researching gifted schools as well, and the same sort of issues apply there.

For readers who have lots of kids or who have already been through this process, it probably comes as no surprise that it all comes down to the child.  Every kid is different, so some fit better in one environment than another, and it can be challenging to gauge how that child will do until they try out the school.  Administrators and teachers at a good school will help you if your child doesn’t seem to be comfortable right away where s/he is, and they will suggest an environment that might work better.  I think the best thing we can do as parents is observe and ask good questions of our children and the teachers to make sure nothing is being overlooked.  And then we can keep watch in terms of the homework load (another big issue) - how much is too much?  Do our kids still have time to play and learn on their own?

This experience of researching schools has put me back to thinking about my own education - whether I should have been at a private school instead of a public school, whether my preschool environment really made any difference, and other concerns that are related.  Take school nutrition, for example.  I began a poor eating regimen in junior high school that didn’t truly turn around until after I had suffered from several health problems over the ten years following.

I’ve concluded that our school choices as parents can make a huge difference.  A lot of research suggests that play-based, individualized learning can help children become better problem-solvers and communicators, so I can only hope that beginning with that in mind, they will help us figure out the best course for their educations.

A lot can be written about finding the right school for your child - public vs. private, secular vs. religious, coop vs. traditional, and of course play-based vs. structured.  There’s a wide spectrum in all of those areas plus other specialized programs, and where I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, the variety of options can be overwhelming.  But let’s say, for the sake of simplification that we’re searching for a largely play-based environment for our children during their early years.  What then?

Before my husband and I decided to try for a baby, I naively scoffed at new parents fretting about where to send their kids to school; I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about - and why on earth was it such a big deal to get kids into “the right preschool”?  Then a couple of years later, we made our decision to start a family, I soon became pregnant, and lo and behold, people were already warning me: “Have you gotten on any waiting lists yet?” They said, with obvious tension in their voices.  I shrugged in reply. ...

More to the point for those of us interested in Playborhoods, is it considered lowbrow in Palo Alto or Menlo Park for kids to play outside in neighborhoods?  The few neighborhoods where I’ve detected small amount of outdoor play in Palo Alto and Menlo Park have home prices in the middle range or below here, but of course, these prices are still among the highest in the US.

Geez, this is depressing to even think about.  It’s depressing because I’d hate to think that neighborliness is to the 21st century what something like infant mortality was to the 19th and 20th centuries - i.e. a scourge of the lower- and middle-class that we’d like to eradicate completely from American society.

Please, someone, tell me I’m wrong, and tell me we’re going to turn this around and make neighborliness and outdoor play desirable, even among upper-middle- and upper-class folks.  I’d hate to have to buy a house we don’t want just to have a vibrant neighborhood with outdoor play for our kids.

The neighborhoods with the nicest homes in Palo Alto and Menlo Park are very quiet.  Very, very quiet.  I’m talking almost-never-talk-to-your-neighbor quiet.  So, they’re not Playborhoods (i.e. neighborhoods where kids go outside and play), regardless of whether kids live there or not.

That’s the conclusion my wife and I have come to, by and large, after two plus years of house hunting here. 

Of course, we want a house in a Playborhood, and as for the house. we would like lots of interior space - at least 3000 square feet.  We’ve discovered that finding both of these things is nearly impossible.  We’re square pegs trying to fit into a round hole.

The fact is that, overall, the owners of these 2+ million dollar homes are not very “neighborly,” at least when they’re compared to owners in other neighborhoods with much less expensive homes.

For example, on the Arbor Real project, one of the three adjacent developments in South Palo Alto at the old Rickey’s Hyatt and Elks Club sites, decisions had already been made regarding mixed use.  “So, while I might have wanted to include some retail,” Solnick commented, “the City Council had already approved the zoning without any retail.” However, the ARB did successfully advocate for a community house with a pool.

The key to approving innovative new uses of land lies with the City Council in its rezoning approval process.  The developer buying the property often gets what it wants in this process unless there is a strong visionary leadership from someone in the City Council.  Currently, of the nine Palo Alto City Council members, only one, architect John Barton, has professional training in these issues.  The five-member ARB, on the other hand, is composed entirely of architects.

Personally, Solnick is very sympathetic to the Playborhood ideal of kids playing in the neighborhood.  “I play catch with my son right on the street right in front of my house [in the Downtown North neighborhood], and people go by looking at us amazed, like they’re cheering us on!”
I recently had coffee with David Solnick, Chair of the Palo Alto Architectural Review Board (ARB), at Caffe Del Dogge on University Avenue in Palo Alto.  I wanted to know how Palo Alto might get a new urbanist development like The Waters or a retrofit co-housing community like N Street.  These both represent very innovative approaches to housing that result in very vibrant communities and great neighborhood lives for kids.