#14. Enabling Children’s Play

How can we bring real play into children’s lives in today’s child-unfriendly world?

Our children are suffering from play deprivation. At no previous time and place in known history—except for times and places of child slavery or prolonged child labor—have children had as little freedom to play as our children have today.

As I explained in Letter #2, play is activity that is (1) initiated and directed by the players themselves, not by an outside authority; (2) intrinsically motivated (conducted for its own sake rather than for some reward outside of itself); (3) structured by rules or guidelines created or agreed upon by the players; and (4) always creative and usually imaginative. The most crucial ingredient in this definition is the first—initiated and directed by the players themselves—and therein lies the primary reason for play deprivation.

We have created a world in which children are monitored and controlled by adults nearly all the time. They are spending more time in school and schoolwork at home than ever before. Schooling itself has become ever more rigid with ever less opportunities for play or anything creative. And out of school children are generally no longer free to go outdoors and play with other children unencumbered by adults who monitor, direct, and restrict their activities and thereby destroy play.

Over the same decades (roughly the last 5 decades) that children’s opportunities for play and self-directed activities have been declining, we’ve seen dramatic increases in anxiety, depression, and, most tragically, suicide in children and teens. We are currently seeing record levels of these. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association have declared the high rates of psychopathology among young people to be a “national emergency.”

It should be no mystery that play deprivation would result in increased levels of psychopathology. Children are biologically designed to play. Play is what makes children happy and, as I have explained in previous letters, play—especially social play with other children away from adults—is how children acquire the physical, emotional, social, and cognitive strengths that enable them to deal with the bumps in the road of life without falling apart. In a future letter I will summarize multiple lines of evidence that play deprivation, along with reduced freedom for other independent, self-directed activities, is a major cause of young people’s unhappiness. If you don’t want to wait for that letter, you can read the article on this that colleagues and I recently published in the Journal of Pediatrics.

In what follows, I sketch out some ways that we can, with some effort, bring real play into the lives of children and teens without fundamental change in our social structure (much as that structure needs fundamental change). I do this by listing, as subheads, some possible settings for play and describing what can be done—and has been done in some places—to enable play in each setting. A premise of the entire discussion here is that we live in a world where most parents aren’t going to send their children out to play unless there is one or more trusted adult present to monitor for safety. The trick is to be sure that the monitoring adult knows how to watch for safety and yet refrain from intervening unless there is real danger.

Neighborhoods

Traditionally, the most regular place for children to play was the neighborhood. People my age and even a couple of decades younger remember a childhood in which kids roamed freely in the neighborhood, so they got to know the other kids and played regularly with them. A common refrain of moms everywhere then was “get out of the house, get out of my hair, go out and play.”

The neighborhood included the sidewalks, the street if there wasn’t too much traffic, all the lawns of families with kids and some lawns of friendly neighbors without kids, and any nearby vacant lot. Neighborhood play was age mixed, conducive to making long-lasting friends, and rich in play possibilities because kids could bring all kinds of stuff out from their houses for play. A study done years ago in Zurich, Switzerland revealed that five-year-old kids who could play freely in their neighborhood had twice as many friends and were physically and socially more competent than otherwise similar kids who lived in neighborhoods where free outdoor neighborhood play was prohibited because of heavy street traffic (Huttenmoser, 1995).

But now, at least in the United States, if you send your child out to play there are likely no other kids with whom to play, and worse, there is some chance that someone will call the police and you may be reported to Child Protective Services for child neglect. As a society we have become insane in our overprotectiveness of children, to the point that children are largely under house arrest when they aren’t imprisoned at school.

So, what might you do to make neighborhood play possible where you live? Here’s something that has worked for some, but it takes effort. First, get to know the parents of other kids in the neighborhood where you live. Maybe hold a neighborhood party at your house. Then talk with them about the value of free neighborhood play for children. Many people recall their own childhood play and regret that this hasn’t been possible for their kids. Get a discussion going about this, and maybe show them some of the evidence about how free age-mixed play promotes healthy physical, social, emotional, and cognitive growth.

Then make a proposal. You might collectively decide upon certain times every day, or at least every week, when you will all send your kids outdoors to play. To ameliorate concerns about safety, figure out a way to have at least one adult out there during each play period, not to intervene in play but only for safety. My recommendation is that the monitor be a grandmother or grandfather if possible. They are more likely than young parents to have time for this and less likely to intervene in the kids’ play, because they remember, from their own childhoods, the value of unrestrained play.

A book that might encourage you to try this is Mike Lanza’s Playborhood, in which he describes how he brought children’s play to his neighborhood. He also describes how parents created free play for their kids in seven other neighborhoods, ranging from a poor urban housing development in the South Bronx to an affluent suburban neighborhood in Palo Alto, California.

Playgrounds and Parks

If you look at public playground today, what do you see? Most often nobody or a bunch of little kids with their moms (or in more affluent neighborhoods their nannies) minding their every move and telling them not to do this or that. Most of the playground equipment that once was fun for kids over five years old has been removed because of putative danger.

Beyond playgrounds, parks used to be natural areas to which kids would travel on their bikes or by foot for all sorts of self-directed adventures, including pick-up sports, chase games, and tree or rock climbing, no adults around. A research study a few years ago revealed that, other things being equal (including ages of the children), children played much more vigorously when there was no adult monitoring them than when a parent or other adult was there to supervise or protect (Floyd et al, 2011).

I think the secret to getting kids playing in parks again is like that for getting them to play in neighborhoods. We need adults in the park who are there just to monitor for safety, not to intervene. If parents know and trust the adult monitors, then parents may feel it is safe enough to let their child play there without the parent’s presence. Along this same line, I’m a great fan of adventure playgrounds, also called junk playgrounds, where there is lots of inexpensive stuff for play (such as old tires and boards and tools to build with), where parents are not allowed, but where there is a trained playworker to make sure that things are safe enough and to help with equipment if asked. Perhaps I’ll write a separate letter on that before long.

Schools

Decades ago, a good amount of play occurred at schools. Children had recesses of reasonable duration and often a whole hour at lunchtime for play. But recesses have now been shortened if not eliminated, and at many schools there are rules about what you can and cannot do at recess that essentially destroy play. I don’t know of any schools today where children have an hour free for play at lunchtime. But here’s a positive development.

A growing number of elementary schools have adopted a program that the schools call Play Club. This (I immodestly mention) is my invention, developed through my participation with Lenore Skenazy and others in a nonprofit organization we founded called Let Grow. Schools that opt for this program offer their students an hour of free play at school either before or right after school hours. Children in all grades play together, typically K-5, so it’s age mixed. The play area often includes not just the outdoor playground but also the gymnasium, hallways between the gym and outdoors, and sometimes other rooms that have art supplies, blocks, games, and the like. Sometimes there are as many as 100 or 150 kids playing at once. The only rules at Play Club are don’t hurt anyone and don’t break anything valuable. The teachers who monitor Play Club are instructed that during this hour they are not teachers. They are like lifeguards on an ocean beach, there to intervene only in cases of real danger. They are told that a major purpose of play is for children to learn to solve their own problems.

Reports indicate that this program has been remarkably successful in the eyes of all parties involved—the teachers, administrators, parents, and, of course, the students (Parrott & Cohen, 2021). Students make friends across grades, begin to see the school as a friendlier place, and seem to develop confidence that carries over into the classroom. At present most schools offer Play Club just once a week, but some are beginning to offer it more than that. My vision is that schools would begin to stay open for free play every day after school, from the time the school day ends until parents are home from work. That would not only provide many hours of health-promoting play every week but would also solve the babysitting problem for parents who can’t be home right when kids get out of school. You can find out more about Play Club and another Let Grow school program here.

Libraries

Another encouraging development is that an increasing number of public libraries have become places for children to play. As libraries have less need than they did previously, because of the Internet, to store books and other media, they are taking on new functions. Some are becoming general community centers, and many are, in various ways, becoming places for children to play.

Three years ago, two library managers (Autumn Solomon and Leah Tatgenhorst) and I conducted a small survey of public libraries in the United States to find out what opportunities they offered for children’s play. You can read a full report of the study here. In brief, we found that most of the libraries surveyed had toys and play spaces for little children, and many also had or were in the process of developing play spaces and programs for older children and teens as well. These include maker spaces (for constructive play, often with high-tech equipment such as 3-D printers and laser cutters), games for older as well as younger children, and rooms where teenagers can hang out, listen to music, socialize, and play games after school.

One library, the Westbank Library in Austin, Texas, managed by Solomon & Tatgenhorst, offers free play at the library for children of all ages for three hours on Mondays after school and sometimes all day on school holidays. Sometimes there will be more than 100 children playing at once, both in a main room inside the library and on the grounds outdoors. Like Play Club in schools, the library provides loose parts, games, art supplies, and much more with which to play, and parents who stay are encouraged to stay in a different part of the library, away from the kids, where they can socialize with other adults. The librarians have developed tactful ways to let parents know that play is best when children work things out themselves, without adult advice or admonishment.

Family Vacations

Here’s another idea. If you go on family vacations, consider combining with other families. If you vacation at a camping site, the children can run off and play with one another while the adults socialize in adult ways with one another. Family time is great, but sometimes kids need a vacation from adults and adults need one from kids. If you do this repeatedly with the same families, over a series of summers, the kids are likely to become life-long friends.

Final Thoughts

Our society has changed in ways that make play much less easily available for kids than it was in the past, so a major challenge for parents is to figure out ways to make it available. I’ve suggested some possible ways here. Even if you aren’t a parent or if your kids are grown, you might work with neighborhood groups, city parks departments, schools, libraries, churches, and camps to help them become better places for children’s play, safe enough that parents will allow children to play there but free enough for real play.

I invite you to add postscripts to this letter, in the comments section, containing your own thoughts about how to enable children’s play in today’s over-controlling world.

I also invite you to subscribe to this Substack series if you haven’t already done so and to share this letter with others.

References

Floyd, M., et al. (2011). Park-based physical activity among children and adolescents. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 41 (3), 258-265.

Huttenmoser M. Children and their living surroundings: empirical investigations into the significance of living surroundings for the everyday life and development of children. Child Envir 1995;12:403-13.

Parrott, H. M., & Cohen, L. E. (2021). Advantages of mixed-age free play in elementary school: Perceptions of students, teachers, and parents.  International Journal of Play, 10, 1-18.