Recent surveys have shown that as employers look to hire, one of the first characteristics the look for is creativity and ingenuity, that out-of-the-box type of thinking that allows for new marketing opportunities for businesses to grow. That’s all the more reason to foster creativity among your kids, right?

Unfortunately, the sense of creativity is actually becoming more and more of a rarity, particularly with the most recent wave of digital natives who struggle to find inventive ways to play (gasp) outdoors. This drastic loss of original thinkers is devastating to our culture, since inventive new ideas are such a rich part of our heritage and we pride ourselves in it as a nation. Think, if it weren’t for Thomas Edison, we would be watching TV in the dark.

Sorry to say, the sad truth is that creativity is a dying feature. But before everyone takes up their torches and pitchforks, and storms after the “careless” parents of the digital age who use television as a babysitter and the internet to teach kids about sex, a recent report published by National Public Radio suggests that kids could be losing that longstanding creative edge because they’re not allowed the same room to go outside and explore the way they once were. That is to say that over time, parents have restricted how far they allow their children to roam from the house. Decades ago, an 8-year-old would be pushed out the door at 8 a.m. on a summer morning and told not to return until 5 p.m. unless someone was dead or dying. Young children would walk miles from home, just to go fishing. Think the opening of the Andy Griffith Show, minus Andy Griffith. The world was literally their playground and with it, endless opportunities to explore.