Children are suffering a severe deficit of play

The only thing to do was play which we did prodigiously - I was part of a large mix-aged group (6-12 kids, 5 years age difference) and we would play everything (sports, house, building things, demolishing things, raising stray animals, foraging fruit, fighting other kids). It was a great childhood and neither I nor my childhood friends (most of us are still friends, even across continents) would trade it for anything. Interestingly, it was almost the same childhood my mom and dad had.

My sister (the de-facto leader of our group) now has children and their childhood could not be any different - constantly shuttled from home to school to organized activity. Play only for a bit under heavily supervised conditions (ie, birthday party at another kids house) and filled to the brim with tablets, phones, computers etc.

I feel very bad for my nephew's effective lack of childhood, even more so because it seems that doing something differently is a big social taboo. My mom, siter and I have talked about this, and my sister described being almost powerless - who would they play with? Where? What are other parents going to think? etc etc.

When I go to places like rural Belize or small-town Costa Rica I see kids still playing and I wonder if that's not the best place to raise a small kid (4-10 years old).

I'm not complaining for myself, because incomes among programmers give us much better options than most people, but I really feel sorry for people in the middle class. Two parents working to make ends meet doesn't leave a lot of time/energy for them to play either by themselves or with their children. That's part of why kids get dumped into organized but relatively low-value activities; it's the only way the parents get a break between waking and kids' bedtimes. Unfortunately, it's not good for any of them, or for society as a whole.

I've got a 13 yr old brother and a 10 yr old sister, and they play. Anecdotally, this article is bunk. Kids play still, even if they are getting shuttled off to various practices.

As a counterpoint to the rise in mental illnesses in children, isn't our improved ability to test for illness, and our increased willingness to diagnose mental disorders as much at play as any other cause?

In the 5 or so minutes it took me to read this article, I can't help but think of this as yet another example of, "my childhood was great, the next generation lost something!" that can be seen throughout history. I'm no expert, and I know nothing more than a layman does on the topic, but in my limited experiences, I've found no such suggested problem.

I guess I just want my experience to be added to the data pile.

I was giving guitar lessons some 20 years ago, among my students a well-mannered and friendly little, maybe seven years of age. Being a bit shy he did not tell much about himself, but he did not study much and I tried to find out if he was bored with me or the instrument.

"It's just, that I do not have so much time to study. I also have recorder lessons on Thursday and I get some extra private lessons because it's not going so well in school"

As he continued he revealed a stunning package of forced child labour extending into the weekend. Keyboard lessons, swimming, soccer (training and competitions), judo (also contests every second weekend). Not a single free minute.

Halfway the year he stopped. On the time of the guitar lessons his parents had scheduled regular counselling with a psychologist.

This happened 20 years ago (in the Netherlands). While we tried to find a kindergarten for our oldest sun two years ago, we learned that we could opt for mathematical and English training in some of them (we live in Portugal right now).

I understand that parenting also means: offering your child a future. For some this means: education, keeping them busy, making them competitive as early as possible. Not having done "the best" for your child: a nightmare, a failure! But often doing your best is: having trust, do nothing and let things grow. No need to hack your children.

Just because kids don't play the same way you did when you grew up doesn't necessarily mean they're doing it wrong.

Tomorrow there will be a study suggesting video games are a better intellectual stimuli for growing up and yield lower rates of accidental death in children.

    l - parental distance (length)
    t - parental distance (time)
    F - Lord Of the Flies coefficient
    d - diversity of other children within reach

    TotalPositivePlay =   (l x t )
                          --------  raised to power of d
                             F 

So build for open or natural spaces, with good lines of sight and minimal killers like cars, allow parents the time to relax and realise its ok for Jimmy to run off for an hour because the shopping can wait, and then let them teach kids not to follow their instincts but actually respect others smaller and weaker then them, we might get over our fears.

yes we lean too much to DVDs and so on. but two weeks ago my kids and I painted cardboard dragons, picked blue series from a bush, ran off and hid in the woods, fell off swings and slides, made two meals and fought with foam swords. oh and I felt I just put them in front of the TV all the time.

lighten up FFS. Cars, commuting and the easy lure of the TV has hurt how we bring up children - but they also don't feel isolated, bored, or unprepared for a rapidly changing new world.

but yes, lets cut back on the organised activites and just to to the park more often.

Without proper nutrition, they won't develop properly, to say nothing of being able to play. I know it's unrelated, but it seems like everybody wants to ignore the pink elephant in the room that American children aren't getting fed well enough. Plenty of research has shown malnutrition causes a host of issues in children that can affect them the rest of their life[4].

22 Million American children are on food stamps[1]. Keep in mind that 90% of those food stamps are redeemed by the third week of the month (the average meal per person comes out to about $1.50), and more than half of food bank customers (who come back at least 6 months out of the year) are food stamp recipients[2]. So families already can't afford to feed their kids on subsidies alone. On top of that, the cuts this November in SNAP will make that existing shortfall more drastic.[3]

I guess I just wanted to remind people that we're ignoring some bigger picture issues here, probably because they're difficult and uncomfortable. Sorry.

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/07/11/th... [2] http://feedingamerica.org/how-we-fight-hunger/programs-and-s... [3] http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3899 [4] http://www.lsuagcenter.com/en/family_home/family/childcare/C...

(my apologies to the international folks for having to read this rant; your children are probably better off than many of ours)

- a creek or open stormwater drain to play in, be careful during rain - a field big enough to experiment with golf in without killing someone - a covert campground as a base to launch fire cracker attacks on the local youth group - somewhere to do wheelies without being hit by a car - abandoned stuff to explore, the older and dirtier the better - a haunted looking house to be scared of (containing an elderly person who occasionally appears at the window) - a beach, island or isthmus, to play Robinson Crusoe on - some dirt to create a marble obstacle course in - a hoop and stick to make running more useful - a local cop who will make you do chores for trying to steal dinner from the local prawn farm - cane fields to get lost in - loose rules to a handful of sports - a tall tree with branches overhanging a river to tie a rope swing to - some kind of farm nearby where one can meet a horse, cow, goat or sheep

I'd also like to suggest a trampoline, but I'm keeping it out of the list because you have to buy it. It is imperative though for the early stages of learning to do somersaults in mid-air.

Thinking of all of these things from my childhood makes me somewhat lament the fact that I now live in a tiny apartment in Sydney and hardly ever leave the city.

Thanks to parental controls, they have two hours of access to the flickering rectangle during week-end days, and 1 hour Mon-Fri. Even that seems like a lot. But anyway, that's it.

Once the OS kicks them out of the session, I "kick" them out of the house (metaphorically, but on a jocular/stern tone). Go and do some mischief outside.

My oldest did ask if she could play Minecraft as soon as she got home but I told her no and that she should go build something real (I guess that is where the teepee idea came from).

Just "thinking about it" proves this?

This read failed to convince me of the former. That being said, it did convince me to pick up the author's book.

Grew up in the 2000's.

Schools teach us how to be disciplined and work hard, but a creative and a critical mind requires more to survive. It requires an atmosphere of similar kind of people, a place to keep on practicing its creativity.

The motivation for kids to learn would be that they won't have to be stuck in school all day (and be accused of having ADD) and they won't miss out playing basketball wrh their friends if they learn everything the night before. It also makes them practice autonomy, self-direction and time management, and lessons by a really good teacher can be delivered to hundreds of thousands of kids instead of 30 -- with multimedia. In addition, kids would be able to paude it, grab lunch with friends, study with friends, etc. And yet they'd still practice being accountable but on a day-by-day basis so the price of "failure" is low.

School should be for social collaboration, remedial help, and practicing. That's where the tutors should be, not at home. Home should be a place of comfort and learning. The internet contains so much information, and by integrating lessons with tablet computers, kids get to develop modern habits of researching stuff online. They might even learn to manage the ADD that comes with being on a million sites at once. If they get restless they can go play basketball or explore and do something physical outside.

Such a school will not happen, sadly, because the goal of schools is to act as a daycare center to keep kids occupied most of the day -- while both parents work. This is what "a good economy" looks like?

This is the kind of school I'd like to send my kids to. Sadly the closest approximation right now is homescholing.

Interestingly however, in the last 15 years apparently the area where I grew up has seen a substantial decline in participation by children in sports and other activities. What caused that? I can only think of three possibilities: 1) decline in parenting 2) obesity and or diet 3) cheap, plentiful digital gadgets (or a combination). Parents seem to be almost universally allowing their children to obsessively play with smart phones, tablets, etc. And many parents I know buy their kids big screen TV's for their rooms and video game consoles.

Either I get a lot of "you don't let your kids watch tv?!" type comments, or a random stranger will freak out because my kids are not tethered to me. I've had strangers stop while walking/riding their bike down my road and ask my daughters (the oldest is five) where they live while I'm working in the garden in the next yard over.

I honestly have no proof that raising kids like this is any better than letting them watch media or be in organized activities all the time. My reasoning is mostly based on how I was raised. I loved it and feel like I turned out reasonably well.

One problem I see that they don't like to discipline any wrongdoings, the proper way for that is for the collective to decide at the 'commission for discipline''; my daughter was in constant terror of being referred to the 'discipline commission'; kids who where more violent generally ignored this threat, as a result there are few means of handling/discipline real offenders. In a way the result that stronger and more rowdy kids are favored and so they tend to impose their will on others.

Another problem is that somehow humans always build hierarchies, so there is no such thing as a egalitarian society, even in grade A. So unconstrained 'Bullying Betty' again tends to get her will against all others; now if her parent is a teacher in the institution than that will somehow get 'bullying Betty' another head start; In our place I could discern several hierarchies, somehow at the center there always were the kids whose parents worked at the institution.

Also kids tend to compare themselves to others, even if there are no grades they will create their own distinctions;

Now another major problem is that still kids will have to get some input from grown ups; the requirement to learn how to read and write will put you in front of a teacher; the teacher in our case would have to handle a loud class where every pupil would be on a different level ( they can walk out of classes ), I think the teacher in our case was not up to the task; now of course the results were blamed on our daughter; interestingly once she got out of the institution my daughter started to learn well.

So for me, as for other similar cases at our school the bright idea did not work out; We put our daughter into a general school, and she was thankful for the change, she does not look back;

I would say that the ideal of democratic schools is similar to the ideal of Communism: the ideal sounds great, but the implementation always turns the idea into shit.

1. Forced activities (sports, music, dance, etc.) and having to drive and fly all over with kids for these activities. These activities do not let kids imagine or have long amounts of free-play, though the arts aren't terrible in that regard, and they do foster relationships which might help your kids make friends to go play and have free time. So it is a trade off.

2. Too much homework. When homework is 3-4 hours a night in elementary school, something is wrong. If you are a strict homeschooler that has the kids working 24/7 or have kids in a private school where they spend 3 hours doing homework too often, talk to the teachers, and if that doesn't help, consider public school.

"Concerted Cultivation: The parenting style, favored by middle-class families, in which parents encourage negotiation and discussion and the questioning of authority, and enroll their children in extensive organized activity participation. This style helps children in middle-class careers, teaches them to question people in authority, develops a large vocabulary, and makes them comfortable in discussions with people of authority. However, it gives the children a sense of entitlement.

"Achievement of Natural Growth: The parenting style, favored by working-class and lower-class families, in which parents issue directives to their children rather than negotiations, encourage the following and trusting of people in authority positions, and do not structure their children's daily activities, but rather let the children play on their own. This method has benefits that prepare the children for a job in the "working" or "poor-class" jobs, teaches the children to respect and take the advice of people in authority, and allows the children to become independent at a younger age."

----

When contrasted against Achievement of Natural Growth it's not so surprising that parents have decided to take another path. Simple romanticism about the past isn't really that helpful. Just kick the kid out of the house and let them play? People talk about the lack of peers that aren't similarly scheduled up, but I see kids all the time who are left free... and I'm not comfortable with how those kids are developing in that environment. Not that they aren't fine playmates, but it's not a kind of parenting I would want to imitate. And a lot of the efforts pushing for more structured time (more afterschool activities, full day kindergarten, universal preschool) are directed towards those kids that need it. But of course we all get washed up in it, even if increased structure is only needed by a segment of the population.

There are other models. Consider for instance Tools Of The Mind (http://www.toolsofthemind.org/), a preschool program that has shown surprising success. It incorporates a lot of pretend play, but adds structure to that pretend play. But it's not authoritarian structure. Adults are really important to children, we have a lot to offer. We can enhance play, get kids out of ruts, enhance the environment, help kids match up their desires with productive paths of learning. Which also means giving them independence at the right time. And sometimes at the wrong time. And sometimes kids need to be understimulated. But it's not that simple.

From the article: "You can’t teach creativity; all you can do is let it blossom. Little children, before they start school, are naturally creative." I don't buy that. Teaching creativity might be going a bit far, but it can absolutely be nurtured and inspired. Children, when just left alone, DO NOT DO WELL. I know just interjecting myself in a kids play for 30 seconds, at the right time, can considerably improve the creativity of their play. My nephew has been pretty into playing with blocks lately, but kind of repeating himself. I started making a bridge with a ramp, and he's been obsessed with those forms for the last few days, trying new configurations, larger structures, bridges across corners, all sorts of stuff. Real creativity, he's not just copying what I did. But he needed a little inspiration.

Do you just let kids work out all their problems between each other on their own? Sometimes kids work things out well. Sometimes they fight, often they bully, sometimes they are deliberately cruel, or depressingly meek. Setting up a bunch of rules is a bad solution too. Never hit! Now you can't play fight with paper towel rolls. And you can't learn how to interact physically without hurting each other. Always share! Or: always ask before taking! Or: turns! But sometimes one kid really wants something, and the other kid just happens to be holding that thing. Or sometimes a kid is just immitating, they ignored the toy until they saw someone else enjoying it. But the negotiated response is more sophisticated than any rule. Ask, trade, offer, come up with a creative way to both play with the toy. Acknowledge that not all kids communicate well with language, but body language is often more than enough to work on. But this doesn't happen on its own. As the kids get older, they don't communicate constructively on their own, or resolve their own conflicts, but they can do those things. They need help. Not rules, not structures to define their interactions, but they need engaged adults (or older children).

I don't really disagree with this article. But it's a critique that lacks empathy with the parental decisions that got us to where we are, and it does not respond to the concerns those parents have had. I think there's a way to achieve both, parenting isn't a choice somewhere on the line between two extremes, there's no limit to the number of novel and engaged choices available to us.

Eric Schmidt is right 'surveillance ... is the nature of our society'

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/13/eric-schmidt-go...

Maybe its just that society is becoming more and more authoritarian ?

My early childhood I was more free, the school had less rules and structure, and more importantly, I had loads of free time that my mother let me spend with my friends that lived in the same building.

I remember how we learned not only physical stuff, but also theoretical one, purely out of curiosity, like one night where we all sat on the ground, and wondered why the sky was blue even at night. (resulting into a couple of us that knew how to read go read books, so that then we could impress others with our newfound knowledge, resulting into everyone learning why the sky was blue).

Also, when I was around 5 years old, I had a female friend on school that I grew very close, we became natural leaders of our class, we were the most intelligent students (not hard when your class has 8 people, the female friend was asian, and my parents gave me lots of books since before I could read), the most playful ones (when others wanted a new game, they would ask us to invent it), and although individually we were the usual bully victims (since we were the nerdy types with glasses), we two were respected, other kids looked to us to what to do when shit happened (like when one girl got hurt by a bee, me and my female friend quickly figured how to carry her from the place where she was, and find a adult, and ice).

Also I visited her home a couple times, and although I was very young, I might say that I DID saw her as someone I wanted to be with the rest of my life.

Then the first grade came, it was in a huge school (I moved from a school with 80 students to one with 7500 students), my parents told me (correctly) that now things would be "serious" and that I would start to learn how to work (I guess, "work" as in be in a corporate environment).

Although I changed schools many times after, some things were constant:

First, I did not gave a fuck for whatever the school taught, my first 2 years (first and second grade) teachers saw me as the stupid kid (because I never finished my copy of the blackboard, getting distracted by other things, and also because I frequently failed to finish my tests on time, both situations would result into me being berated, and then me crying), when I learned to "play along" instead I became the genius (ie: all tests I had the maximum score), not because I learned what teachers taught me, but because I already (before first grade) had as hobby read the school books the fastest as I could (I love reading, sometimes I spend 3, 4 hours daily reading wikipedia, or everything linked here in HN), and because I disliked getting berated for not copying stuff or not doing homework.

But that time, I also learned that the other kids were NOT my friends, they were competitors, they were people to crush, destroy or annihilate, with better grades, or just go and punch them in the face when they piss me off and I will get away with it, because if I avoided that, they would do with me... Until the fourth grade I was bullied heavily (well, I was bullied until I left university), but on when I reached the fifth grade I started to learn that being cruel, being fearsome, destroying other people, made them bully you less... I still could not bring myself to throw a rock into a girl head (like some guy in my seventh grade class did), because I thought that going to downright evil was not the day, but doing any bullying that would not get teachers worried, was worth it, like sabotaging other people, setting them to fail, usually all that as revenge, never first strike, because then people would come for you, but revenge, ooh, that was sweet. The sweetest one was kicking a guy mouth in the middle of a group photo (all students of the school, lined up in a ramp, with all staff of the school looking, the guy was annoying me the entire day, and decided as final trick of the day, steal my hat and make me lose my balance so the photo captured me in ankward manner, and I decided that the best course of action was kick him in the mouth so hard that made him tumble down the ramp, and made all girls run around screaming in panic).

Only about 4 years ago (I am 25) now I started to realise how all this is fucked up, I became a sort of psycho, in my final school years I envied the columbine people and wanted to do the same...

Now I am playing catchup, my first kiss I was 23 (at 23 years old, is the first time that I felt for a girl what I felt for that one when I was 5/6), I left college realising that if I had not joined it in first place and instead took a job, I would be better at the job and would have more money (currently 50% of my money is to pay debt, and my net worth is deeply negative), and I have no friends (except one of the guys of the building I lived when I was 5, IF I can really consider him a friend, it is already 2 years that I don't visit him), at weekends I have nothing to do but stay at home or see my SO, when I need money for my startup, there is noone to ask, when I want to play split screen multiplayer games, there is noone to ask either, board games is a family thing only, and when former school people come to talk with me (usually because they need me...), I still feel really weird (ie: I feel lots of things, among them desire to revenge, fear, desire to murder them, ressentment, frustation...).

I feel like if my life between 8 years old and 20 years old was non-existant, like a black hole in my history, something that left more negative things in me than positive.

I wish there was a way, to do it all over again, to learn how to have friends, to have playful time with people I can trust, to not have this stupid debts, to not be unhealthy like I am now (I only learned how to eat properly recently, I am struggling very heard to get my weight below 100kg, I did managed to reach 99kg last year, but I am 118kg now), or not be weak as I am now (not having much physical play means I struggle to carry everyday items with my arms sometimes, my dad that never went to the gym and is a engineer, can carry stuff much heavier than I can, my grandpa is always much stronger than me, if he wants he can lift me! also he never went to the gym, and his hobby right now is lottery statistics, he spent most of his time of the day writing numbers in a sheet).

My first girlfriend broke with me after I told her I would not send my kids to school, no matter what. (in Brazil this is dangerous, since it is a crime and government DO arrest you if you refuse to send kids to school).

I feel like mandatory "education" is one of the most evil things you can do to a kid.

I DO prize some sort of schools, but only if the kids WANT to be there, because a school where schools don't want to be there, they use their time ruining the day of those that want. (ie: when a teacher DID managed to get my attention, usually talking about physics, someone else would be throwing erasers at the teacher, or kicking my chair, or hiding my backpack, or atheists stealing my bible and playing soccer with it, then calling themselves rational and reasonable...)

A lot of the classic bulgarian kid movies were about kids roaming the streets of the city, village, forest, etc. For example the whole family goes to a tourist resort, beach, and then you see kids of different ages going together somewhere.

One of my favourite shows as a kid was Verano Azul (spanish - Blue Summer) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verano_azul) - it was very popular on Bulgaria, and it also reflected the kind of play we used to have in there.

One of my other popular shows (Blake's 7, we did not had Star Trek back then) - was also very popular - outside we would play as characters from the show - like Zen, Oracle, Blake and other characters from the show. Sometimes few, othertimes dozen, and few times we were like 40-50 kids gathered from group ages from 1st to 8 or 9th grade playing together (bullying was all the time there I guess, I've never noticed it seriously - it wasn't an open concept, neither taboo - more like unknown thing - that just happens and you deal with it. It's different now that you know it, and have a child on your own, and live in USA - like me).

As kids, often we would go to the nearest construction site (usually high-rise building in construction) and do stupid things. It was the norm to fight with sticks - plastic or wood, throw stones, rocks at each other - and almost everyday come with blood here and there (no big deal, I survived).

My biggest adventure by far was, when me and my one year older cousin (he was 6 or 7 then) took the road to walk from one city (Chernomoretz, Bulgaria) to another (Burgas) - here is the route on google maps - http://goo.gl/EfRMsK - It's 26km - and we walked, took some bus, did a lot of stupid things (bent signs, ate stuff that we should not do). But overall had pretty good time. We started off like 8:00-9:00AM in the morning, and showed up at my grandparents apartment somewhere in afternoon. It was all because I thought we need an important plastic truck which was there.

Then with my other grandma we went couple of times to her village in the summer, and there I would roam the village, river, forest ( http://goo.gl/8HyhbQ ) - and come back late at night, sometimes 10:00pm, sometimes 2:00am - and I was 2nd or 3rd grade.

I guess she was afraid, but one thing she knew, or kind of expected it - is that other people if told that I'm lost would look for me, scorn me if they had to.

In short: I had respect of everyone bigger than me, and everyone else too. The situation in USA currently is that the first time you open your mouth against some kid to scorn him, and you might end up in prison. And that might be the right thing to do... But it's very unhelpful, since the kids no longer respect you.

It's quite different now with our son (soon to be 6) - he grows much faster than me emotionally, intellectually - he asks things that I would've asked much later in my kids' life. On top of that he's supposed to start his real life working much older than me (if he's willing to finish uni/ etc.)

Got the "Dangerous book for Boys" and would seen read it to him. I have to learn some american stuff after all (for example I do only understand the rules of soccer and basketball) :)

(but then I remember it's hard to master a second language and that this comment is probably full of 'blatant' errors)

* Idealization of "hunter-gatherer" societies -- this is the root of many a fad diet and self-improvement methodology, but whenever I'm faced with a choice of doing something a hunter-gatherer would have done or doing what I can do now in modernity, I almost always choose modernity. Medicine, sanitation, pooping indoors, and not dying at 20 is very appealing. The "freedom" afforded to people in the past is a great attractor (as a communist in undergrad, I'd frequently hear how people in pre-industrial societies rarely worked, and how THAT was the inflection point where everything went to shit). But ultimately, most of us agree the future is better than the past.

* Argument ad Evolution -- Evolution frequently produces working machines, but it nearly never produces optimal machines. No architect would design a building with one central support structure, and no camera-maker would occlude the light sensor with a wire. Most of the advances of human society have come from disregarding evolution and the "natural" order of things, not from adhering to them.

* "____ cannot be taught" -- in this case, creativity. Artistic schools have existed for millennia; whole areas of modernity are dedicated to creatively solving problems, and it would be very surprising if there were really no verbally expressible heuristics or even systematic exercises that lead to a person subjected to them becoming better at creating ideas. I'm not sure what the measures used in the article are, and am skeptical of them because good measures are hard to create. But I can note that society as a whole remains fairly creative, and that we haven't descended into a pit of Idiocracy as of yet.

As with most things, it's likely that some combination of the two approaches is correct. The current educational system and parental culture could probably use significant overhaul, but it's also not currently based in very much science. It's likely that whatever optimal solution exists relies on brain machinery created by evolution, but the way that machinery is honed will be by a process that has never existed in nature (similar to how the fat-creation process is honed by hyperstimulating foods). I would personally like it if the best way for education to happen were by a process that was fun, engaging, and centered around the autonomy of learners, but that may not be the case, and I'd rather have well-educated and capable future generations of humans than have humans that are as similar as possible to their ancestors.