Create a Play-Based Childhood

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We know that play is fun, but there is so much more to it than that. Today, I’m talking about the importance of play-based childhoods, why our society has moved away from them and some strategies to bring play back into your family and create a play-based childhood for your kid.

Kids want to play, and they need to play. They have a lot to learn before they become adults, and experience (i.e. play) is the key to emotional, psychological, physical and cultural development.

Why Play Is Important

The true purpose of play is for kids to learn how to be adults. They have to learn to move their bodies in a variety of ways, navigate a complex environment, develop fine motor skills, learn to interact with others and build lots of brain skills (both neurological and psychological). 

One of the most important things to understand is that learning happens through experience, not information. I like to joke that if lectures worked, I would not have a job. Kids don’t listen when we tell them how to act. They have to go through hard things, experience the impacts and figure it out for themselves. 

Play allows kids to struggle and learn in ways that feel fun, interesting and challenging. It works best when kids have unstructured time to explore their creativity, relationships, conflict, responsibility, and lots of other valuable skills. When we provide this open time, our kids learn faster and they start to understand how the world works. 

Play in our Society

As a society, we have moved away from play-based childhood and more toward structured, academic enrichment environments or screen-based childhoods. There are several reasons this has happened. 

Sometime around the early 90s, a lot more kids started applying to college and it became much more competitive. So, as a society, we started to work more to prepare kids for academic achievement and college admissions, even from a very young age. 

This led to more academic enrichment activities and a lot more structure. Don’t get me wrong - learning a foreign language, practicing an instrument, playing sports and taking art classes are cool, but when we fill kids’ schedules with more and more of these adult-led activities, there’s less time left over for unstructured play, curiosity and creativity. 

Sometimes, even families who want that unstructured time struggle because their kids’ friends are unavailable to come over to play or go to the park. So they end up enrolling their kids in more activities because that’s what their friends are doing. 

We are also living in a car-centric society. Many of us live in cities or areas where our kids can’t really get places on their own. There aren’t open spaces to explore, and they rely on parents to take them places. 

And many of us have lost some social connection. Maybe you don’t know your neighbors very well or your kids don’t go to the same school as other neighborhood kids. 

Finally, 24-hour news channels and constant alerts on our phones and social media feeds are putting negative news stories in our face that are meant to alarm us. Because of this, we don’t trust other adults as much, and we want to protect our kids.

I share this because I want you to see that you are parenting in a system that makes a play-based childhood hard to achieve. But there are ways that you can opt-out of some of this stuff and provide your child with more unstructured playtime. 

The Value of Risk in Play

In his book, The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt explains two different modes that we have as humans - discover and defend. 

Discover is about curiosity, learning and trying new things. This happens when your brain detects an opportunity - something interesting. You feel excited and motivated to do something. It activates behavior.

Defend inhibits behavior. When your body or brain detects a threat, you’re flooded with stress and negative thinking, so you pull back. When we are in this mode too much, it can create chronic anxiety. 

We want discover mode to be our kids’ default. Here, they come up with mini challenges. Can I climb that branch? How many blocks can I put on my tower before it falls? These experiences train their brain to what their body can or can’t do. It helps kids learn to judge risk for themselves (a skill you’ll definitely want them to have when they’re older). 

We want them to have real world experiences and make affordable mistakes that they learn from. This way, they learn their limitations and how to handle it when things go wrong. They develop the ability to process and get past frustrations, minor accidents, teasing, exclusions and normal conflicts without going into defend mode.

Ultimately, we want our kids to know that they can figure things out and handle whatever comes their way.

How To Create a Play-Based Childhood

The best kinds of play share a few key features. This play involves:

• Free play that is unstructured and loosely supervised. You are available but not deciding and structuring every piece of the game or play. 
• An element of physical risk. Climbing low trees, turning over heavy rocks and jumping off swings help our kids learn how to be in their natural environment and test their physical limitations. They get to have experiences in real life with their bodies. This level of risk should not result in costly or permanent mistakes. 
• Outdoor settings. Being outside provides the opportunity to practice moving through the complex natural environment. Being in nature also supports our kids’ emotional health.
• Child-led play. When kids make up and enforce their own rules for a game or activity, it helps them deal with boundaries that exist in the natural world. Statistics actually show that the risk of injury is lower in child-led versus adult-guided sports and games.
• Being attuned to other’s emotions. Once kids are involved in a game or activity, they have to figure out how to keep it going. They’re taking turns, resolving conflict and sharing emotions. 

Where to Play

Your own yard can be the perfect spot for this kind of play, if you have one. Some other great places to let kids experience free play are parks, open spaces, campgrounds, trails, beaches, lakes or community pools.

You don’t need to go somewhere with any kind of purpose. In fact, I want this to be purposeless. You’re just going, and you’ll see what happens when you get there.

Activities Kids Love

Some types of thrills and challenges that kids love are heights, high speeds, dangerous tools, natural elements (like fire and ice), rough and tumble play, disappearing and wandering away. 

So, we want them to climb trees and play structures, go on the swings and fast slides, use hammers, drills and kitchen appliances with supervision.

Ideas for child-led games include freeze tag, statue, sword fighting, hide and seek, rolling down hills, foursquare and hopscotch. These are embodied games where kids can decide and change the rules.

There are also toys that foster free play. These allow kids to move around and transform with their imaginations. Loose Lego bricks (not sets), Hot Wheels, stuffed animals, dolls made of natural materials, animal figurines, dress up items, art supplies, clay, sticks, buckets, bubbles and scoops, just to name a few. 

Challenges

If your child have not had a lot of opportunity for downtime and free play, they're not going to know what to do at first. Boredom is very uncomfortable, and your kid will resist it. 

But if you allow it long enough without interruption by screens, sweets or a solution, your kid will struggle through it and find play.

You can help initiate it if you want by offering little challenges like, “Let’s see how heavy this rock is,” or “I wonder if you can get your arms around this big tree,” or “How long do you think you can swim underwater?”

As a parent, free, risky play can feel scary or unsafe at times. Do what feels good to you and try to allow as much as you can. 

There is a place for both structured and unstructured time, and unstructured play doesn't mean that you don’t make plans. You might meet up with other families or schedule an outing. Or you might have your kids in camp during the week and block out unstructured time on the weekends. 

Do what works for you. If you value this idea of free play, you can find a way to make it happen.

You’ll Learn:

• The importance of play for our kids
• Why play is a challenge in our current society
• The key elements of play
• How to create a play-based childhood for your kid
• Ideas for child-led, open-ended games and toys

Mentioned in this Episode:

• The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt