Throughout most of history, kids have spent hour after hour playing with parents, siblings, babysitters, and friends. Play is so important in child development that it’s been recognized by the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights as a right of every child.
Unfortunately, the modern busy life style of most families is making the amount of time that children spend playing each day has gone down considerably over the last two decades. A child’s playtime at home has been negatively affected by the hectic lifestyles of today’s working parents and the increased focus that parents often put on the academic end of their children’s education. But this all comes at a cost.
The American Academy of Pediatrics’ recent report explains why children are playing less and what the impact is on today’s kids. Over the last few decades, the amount of play time has been reduced both at school and at home, according to the AAP.
“Play allows children to use their creativity while developing their imagination, dexterity, and physical, cognitive, and emotional strength,” according to the AAP report. It allows children to explore the world, practice adult roles, and gain confidence. And it improves children’s social skills as well, by helping them to “learn how to work in groups, to share, to negotiate, to resolve conflicts, and to learn self-advocacy skills.”
If play is so important to a child’s development, then what’s the impact of this reduction in play? In conjunction with secondary message that kids are receiving from today’s high-pressure world — that they must be the “best” at all times — kids are showing higher levels of stress, anxiety, and depression. They even resort to cheating in school more than ever before, according to the report.
The key to helping your child reach his potential — without the added anxiety — is to find the right balance between work and play. Here are some recommendations from the AAP:
- Give kids ample, unscheduled time to be creative, to reflect, and to decompress
- Encourage your children to engage in active play (running around or playing tag) in lieu of passive entertainment (video games or television)
- Buy your children “true” toys, such as blocks or dolls, that encourage imagination and creativity
- Spend unscheduled, unstructured time together with your kids
- Ask your child regularly whether he feels overly tired, burned out, or overscheduled
- Allow your children to have a say in which extracurricular activities they are involved in
- Get involved in your child’s school and take an active role in ensuring that all kids are getting ample free time.
At Luz All Abilities we strongly value the importance of play and this is one of the reasons why most of our programs are based on the science of play.
