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Play! Play! Play!

Writer's picture: Lisa HinshelwoodLisa Hinshelwood

I often ponder the subject of play, not just for young children, but for all ages. Play is a passion of mine, and has been since I began my career. Indeed, it was the focus of my Ph.D dissertation. The research is bountiful and clear on how every human (and other mammals) develop valuable skills through free play, games, and unstructured creative collaborative time. I'm most likely not writing anything that you do not already know, but what does this really look like in our daily lives for ourselves and for our children?

As a member of what is referred to as Gen X, members of my generation are often fondly reminiscing about all of our childhood experiences riding bikes through neighborhoods, creating games, roaming freely in nearby nature areas, and staying out until our parents called us in for dinner. Recently, my neighbor talked to me about how skinning his knees and taking risks may have left him needing bandages, but also taught him to try different things instead.

At present, I'm reading a book entitled "The Anxious Generation". The author, Jonathan Haidt makes a strong case for how the shift in parenting and perceived culture of fear has resulted in less unstructured and unsupervised free play for children. Simultaneously, digital devices became more prevalent. When children lose the freedom of unstructured play and risk taking, they also lose opportunities to develop social and emotional skills such as compromising, flexibility, conflict resolution, and building resilience.

When my own children were young, I was also overprotective and worried about them, even though I live in a small community. I admired parents who were inside while their children ran around playing in the streets. One day, I was ill, and unable to meet my 7 year old daughter to walk her home from school (which was only about 4 blocks away). She walked home alone, and a friend called me up and said "I saw your daughter walking home alone, how brave of you to allow her to do that" That day has always stuck with me because I had inadvertently given her freedom, and called "brave" for my actions. It hit me in a very strange and reflective way. I knew then and still now that in reality, her walking home alone was not only safe, but gave her independence, responsibility, and was an activity that I could have been allowing more often. I did change some of my parenting actions after that day. So, it leaves me with some questions for us all:

Can we provide more unstructured freedom for our children? How can we let go of our own worries even a small amount,, have trust, and provide opportunities for our children's decision making and risk taking? Is there one opportunity we can add into a day or a week that hands over some responsibility and independence to them? I welcome any comments and thoughts!

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