The adventures of an outdoor mommy: My plea for playtime in childhood

School is starting back up. That means that after-school activities are being scheduled again. I think after school activities and sports are very important for kid's development, but I've recently been running into kids who are always scheduled, and I don't think that's ok.

This is a convo I recently overheard between a mom and her 9 year old daughter:

Mom: When should you do gymnastics this school year?
Daughter: Idk. what day do I have free?
Mom: Well you have soccer and dance on Monday, swim team on Tuesday and Thursday, cheerleading on Wednesdays and Sundays, choir practice on Fridays.
Daughter: Do I have to do gymnastics?
Mom: Well what would you want to do instead?
Daughter: Can't I just do nothing on Saturdays? Maybe play with my toys and see my friends
Mom: No sweetie. That's how you grow up to be a failure.
Daughter: But maybe we could do some fun things as a family
Mom: We do fun things in the car between practices.
Daughter: I don't think that counts, but ok. I guess I'll do gymnastics on Saturday.

After talking to my mom and sister, who are both teachers, my mom had a very interesting point. If this child is never allowed to make decisions, she will have no idea how to make a decision of her own when she is put in a situation with the things her mother is trying to protect her from.

Before I talk about the importance of play, I want to stress that no way of parenting is proven to be right for everybody. If something like above is better for you and your kids, far be it from me to tell you you're wrong. I just think some of this, needs to be toned down a bit.

My mom had a rule for me & my siblings when we were growing up: 1 sport, 1 extra curricular (like scouts or a club), and 1 creative class per kid, per season. I hated this rule as a child, but now that I'm a mom, it makes sense, especially when you have to get three kids to all these separate activities. I realize she did this more for her sake than for ours, but I get it.

I've compiled a little bit of the research I've done on this topic below.

Disclaimer: I focus a lot of my posts on OUTDOOR unstructured play. This is not going to be the same post in different words. This is unstructured play in general, indoor or outdoor.

So, I've looked at researched and read some blogs. Below is a beautiful picture that describes the benefits of free play.

This comes from a blog on the Melissa & Doug website, written by THAT Melissa herself. In the post, she argues for the importance of free play in the lives of young children. She says that we need to "Take Back Childhood" & she couldn't be more right.

"Play leads to brain plasticity, adaptability, and creativity.

Nothing fires up the brain like play.—Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play"

I also found an article on the website CityLab about a literature review that was done of all the studies that have been done about the importance of play. I have included the highlights of that review below.

“Risky” play encourages kids to think critically, and appears to have a positive impact on child health. "We found that play environments where children could take risks promoted increased play time, social interactions, creativity and resilience," Mariana Brussoni, lead author of the study, and assistant professor in University of British Columbia's School of Population and Public Health and Department of Pediatrics, said in a press release.

The term risky here is used to denote a situation whereby a child can recognize and evaluate a challenge and decide on a course of action

“Risky” play encourages kids to think critically, and appears to have a positive impact on child health. "We found that play environments where children could take risks promoted increased play time, social interactions, creativity and resilience," Mariana Brussoni, lead author of the study, and assistant professor in University of British Columbia's School of Population and Public Health and Department of Pediatrics, said in a press release.
[We have] an idea that children are too fragile or unintelligent to assess the risk of any given situation. Now our working assumption is that children cannot be trusted to find their way around tricky physical or social and emotional situations.

They even weighed the positive and negatives associated with risky play.

The authors weigh the benefits against the risks that can be associated with high-octane play, such as bone fractures. (Falls send as many as 3 million kids to emergency rooms in the U.S. each year.) They conclude that “play at height was not related to fracture frequency and severity,” and that wild recreation does not appear to be correlated with other measures of aggression.

So, since we know WHY it is important, how do we go about encouraging free play? I have included a pretty infographic below, but I know from experience that a child will practice this on their own if left alone. Just today, I watched my son turn a lion from one toy into a Captain America cause we don't have that action figure.