If you’re losing the battle to get your kids outdoors to play, you’re not alone. Our kids’ lives are typically tightly scheduled with school, sports, and other organized activities. Under normal circumstances, there may be few blocks of time in any given week when your child could play out of doors. But during the coronavirus Safer at Home mandate, while we're all schooling at home and isolating ourselves, outdoor play is perhaps more important than ever.
At a time like now, it’s becoming more and more apparent that children need unstructured time to play outside where they can run and jump, enjoy nature, and think up their own activities.
The Problems
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that childhood obesity rates in the U.S. more than doubled in the last four decades. Teachers and health professionals note that children are harder to engage in class, more fidgety and anxiety-ridden, and more prone to depression than any time in the past. They don’t get enough time to play actively, and they aren’t using their own imaginations to plan their own activities.
And, if you’re honest, you recognize the problem with technology-related obsessions. If left on their own, today’s kids will choose a screen over active play any day. Rather than read a book, create a piece of art, or enjoy music, kids want to sit for hours with their eyes glued to a screen. Going outdoors to play, as kids did a generation ago, seems to be an old-fashioned thing of the past.
Somehow just letting our kids play, experience the beauty and peace of a natural environment, and think up their own ways to interact with it seems a second-rate use of time. Trust me, it isn’t. Unstructured, natural play is one of the best gifts you can give your children. Here’s why.
The Benefits
Learning
Studies using mice have proven that aerobic exercise increases the growth of brain cells. It also improves performance in learning tasks involving memory. When time for free play is added into a school day, children are better able to focus and are freer of fidgety behaviors.
Math, problem-solving, and reading skills improve when kids have enough time to play during the day. And free play in which kids create their own story lines and activities help with creative thinking as they solve academic problems.
Overall Health
Children need at least 60 minutes of active play each day. While they may get some of that in structured physical education classes or team sports, they benefit in a different way when they run and jump and climb without adult oversight. Active play builds strong bones and raises fitness levels. It allows children to burn off energy and excess calories. It builds independent thinking skills.
When allowed adequate time to play in an unrestricted way, children are better able to settle down in classroom situations and are freer of stress, less irritable, and display more positive attitudes.
Outdoor play also provides natural Vitamin D, which is essential for good health and contributes to a positive mental attitude.
Social Skills
When children play independently they learn valuable social skills. They learn to share equipment or materials. They learn how to work cooperatively in accomplishing a task. They learn problem resolution skills when conflicts arise. There is great value for children to learn how to solve problems without adult intervention.
Both Active Play and “Just Being”
Providing time for our children to play outdoors in natural settings will continue to be a challenge, but it’s one worth taking on. Think back to your childhood days. You probably spent part of it tearing around in active play and some of it in quiet reflection, just being.
Your child needs time for both.
Jan Pierce, M.Ed., is a retired teacher and writer specializing in family life, education and parenting. She is the author of Homegrown Readers and Homegrown Family Fun: Unplugged. Find Jan at janpierce.net.
Resources
The Benefits of Outdoor Play for Children, Maria Magher, Livestrong.com, May 2015.
Exercise for Children: Why Keeping Kids Physically Fit is Good for the Brain and Helpful in the Classroom, Gwen Dewar, Ph. D., 2016.
Seven Benefits of Outdoor Play for Children, Fawns.Co.UK, 2016.