Paige Herrmann is a first-time mom to a 2-year-old who lives in a suburb south of Dallas. She’s new to this whole mom gig, but she does know one thing: When her little boy gets unstructured playtime, he’s a happier, more independent kid. That’s huge for her, since he doesn’t have any siblings to entertain him and she works full-time. Herrmann notices her son gets grumpy and overstimulated when he doesn’t have that playtime.
There’s a biological reason for that, says Sara Loftin, Clinical Therapist at Children’s Health in Dallas. For kids, play is serious business: It enhances brain structure and function and promotes the process of learning. And that’s just the beginning.
“I see in younger kids as well as older kids, [play] helps them regulate their emotions, relieve their stress, helps them recover from emotional distress,” Loftin says. “Play is a coping skill. I think it’s a way that kids fill their cup of mastery.”
How play promotes health
Play is so important to child development that it has been recognized by the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights as a right of every child. It’s more than fun—it’s the foundation for kids’ healthy growth, contributing to the overall well-being of kids.
Playing contributes to a child’s mental health. Young kids’ brains aren’t developed enough to be able to work out what’s upsetting or frustrating them and communicate that verbally, says Loftin. “In the same way that adults communicate through words and talking, kids can’t really do that because of their brain development. And so they use their natural language of play and toys as their words to communicate their thoughts and feelings.” Through play with other kids, they learn how to interact with others, through observation, mimicking, body language, and facial expressions.
Play is equally crucial for physical health. Running, jumping, hopping, throwing—this strengthens kids’ bones, muscles, heart and lungs and reduces their risk for obesity and diabetes. And beyond those gross motor skills, play helps develop fine motor skills too. Debbie Rhea, director of the LiiNK Center for Healthy Play at Texas Christian University, advocates for four 15-minute recesses per day at the elementary level. She’s found that when elementary-age kids have an hour of recess a day, their fine motor skills improve. “Being able to control in the lines, being able to color within the lines, things that they weren’t able to do anymore when recess was gone. But when recess came back, these things started coming back as well.”
It’s more than fun—it’s the foundation for kids’ healthy growth, contributing to the overall well-being of kids.
Unstructured play also increases resiliency, says Rhea. “The other really cool thing physically is that these kids were not falling and hurting themselves as much anymore. And if they did fall and had a scrape, they just got back up. They became more resilient and tougher again.”
The decline in play
Remember the days when you were kid? Children used to play for hours each day; running, jumping, imagining. They burned calories and strengthened their bodies all the while forming connections—and just having fun. But times change, and playtime continues to decline.
Compared to earlier generations, kids today spend at least 50% less time in unstructured outdoor activities, according to the Alliance for Childhood. Instead, they’re spending much of their time in front of a screen. Kids ages 8-18 spend an average of 7.5 hours with a screen for entertainment each day, the CDC estimates—a whopping 114 full days a year. And that’s not counting the time they spend on a computer for learning.
It’s an issue in schools too, where for decades play has been dwindling. Some kids get less than 10 minutes total a day outdoors—far less than the AAP-recommended 60 minutes a day—to make more room for instruction time to improve test scores in an increasingly competitive educational system. But who’s really winning?
“A state board of education’s approach is to present a ‘quantity’ daily schedule for academic success, rather than a ‘quality’ schedule of content mixed with other necessary developmental child and adolescent requirements,” writes Rhea in Let the Kids Play: The Impact of Chaos on Academic Success. “There is no research showing that more minutes in the classroom and a longer school day without breaks throughout the day produces better learning,” she says. Research actually shows the opposite: More time in the classroom actually results in higher teacher burnout, high school dropout rates, decreased emotional stability, and a lack of socialization.
Unstructured play has been proven to help kids refocus and reboot their brains, resulting in greater concentration, focus, the ability to self-regulate, and less distraction and redirection.
LiiNK is currently working with 30 schools to bring those benefits to kids in DFW. “When I go into new schools, they’re doing recess very little, and they’re using a lot of content time throughout the day…it looks like every kid in the room has ADHD, they can’t sit still, right? They’re just all over the place, bouncing off walls.” But after introducing more playtime, she says, “They would go from about 70% off-task behavior in the classroom in a 30-minute period to 20% off-task within a year. We have videos showing kindergarten kids back on task within, I want to say 20 seconds of coming in from recess.”
Free play is best
Unstructured play, like what we see at recess, is the most beneficial to child development. This is play that involves raw materials with a purpose ready to be assigned by the child—not parents, coaches, or toy marketing teams. Frankly, it’s the kind of play seen in young children that kind of exasperates parents—a child being entertained by boxes and wrapping paper after relatives spent hundreds on the must-have Christmas gifts, for example. But the kids know what they’re doing.
“I advocate for natural items,” says Bethany Fort, executive director of Out to Play, a Fort Worth nonprofit that provides safe, unstructured play spaces for young children. “There’s just more texture, more interesting materials. So wooden blocks, seashells, sand, water, those are the foundation of any great outdoor or sometimes indoor play materials because then the child can do whatever they want with them.” These are items you’ll never find on a blog or top ten gift list, but they are what’s best for kids. “Open-ended play provides the building blocks for learning everything. Social, emotional skills, physical, developmental learning, all types of learning.”
For older kids, the materials are different, but the idea is the same: paper, art supplies, clay, wool, wood, musical instruments; tools. Giving them the raw materials, but no blueprint for what the final product should be. The outcome is the same for all ages: increased ability to regulate themselves, a sense of mastery, a sense of control. “What I hear most from parents is, ‘Wow, it’s just so simple, but they’re having so much fun just playing in dirt!’” says Fort. “And it’s almost like we have to be reminded all the time of that…[they’re] fine with the pot or dirt or a stack of wood. But we have a hard time bringing it into the home or creating spaces for that. It’s not as fancy. It’s not as put together.” No one is posting their collections of sticks and dirt on Instagram, anyway.
Combating Play Deserts
Another factor preventing unstructured play is a lack of access to safe play spaces in the community. Out to Play defines “play deserts” as “longer than a 10-minute walk from a safe, free place to play. That could be a park, or a school playground, or a church playground that’s open to the public. “When you live in a play desert, there’s nowhere for that child to go after sitting in a classroom for 6 hours and 45 minutes and getting just one recess, and that’s a tough situation for parents and kids,” says Fort. “I think most parents would say, ‘I don’t feel like my child’s playing enough. They come out of school and they’re just like a cork ready to pop from sitting all day.’”
Some kids may have access to a nearby park, but parents aren’t willing to let them walk alone to an unsupervised area. Paige Herrmann, for instance, grew up in Arlington when Amber Hagerman, the abducted 9-year-old for whom Amber Alerts were named, went missing. She doubts she will ever let her son play at the park alone.
“I remember being able to go to all the neighbor’s houses and just be gone until it was dark. I think it gave us the ability to be kids, and I wish that our kids lived in a society where they could continue to do that,” she says.
In some areas, libraries are working to fill the gap for parents like Herrmann. “Texas State Library archive, which provides grants for librarians in Texas and libraries in Texas, supports an organization called Family Place Libraries,” says Fort “They provide grants for libraries to put in free play spaces. And there are a lot of those in DFW.” But she says that overall, schools and communities aren’t giving this issue enough attention. “I think people still have in their mind that play is a fluffy thing. We’re much more comfortable teaching 3-year-olds to read than providing play spaces for them.”
Let them be bored
If you want to introduce unstructured play to your child, you’re not alone, says Loftin, who is a certified play therapist. “Ten years ago when I started, I would have parents say, ‘My child doesn’t really play.’ And I would say, ‘Let’s get them in the playroom, and I’m sure that won’t be the case,’ and it was true. Now parents will say, ‘My child doesn’t know how to play,’ and it’s true. It is actually terrifying. A child will come into the playroom and say, ‘Can I play on your phone? Can we go to your office and get on your computer?’”
Many kids have had so much access to ready-made games and apps their whole lives that they have never had to entertain themselves. That doesn’t make it any less essential. “Free play, especially for older kids, is so helpful for children to reach those goals of competence and skill and obedience. That’s how they feel powerful. It’s how they gain control, it’s how they practice,” says Loftin.
The first step to introducing free play—and promoting healthier kids—is getting comfortable with being bored. That can take some getting used to for parents and kids. First step? Send them outside if you can. “Nature in itself is regulating,” reminds Loftin. “And so being outside, we already know that play is regulating and a coping skill that children have just within themselves and adults that we don’t access it enough.”
Have a pile of natural play materials that are easy to access, whether you are inside or outside. The key is letting the child use their creativity to make something. If they complain to you, encourage them, but don’t make suggestions as to what they can or should do. Creativity is a muscle that we all have to work out, so at first boredom will lead. But over time, the ability to be creative will eliminate boredom. “Play stimulates creative thinking and exploration, and it relieves boredom,” says Loftin. “I actually see it as a mom-win when my child is bored. Over the weekend, my daughter said, ‘I’m bored!’ And I said, ‘Oh, that’s great! What an opportunity to be creative. I wonder what you are going to come up with?’”
Let’s not minimize the process—it might be painful. There may even be tears if you’re taking away a tablet or phone or shutting off the router for an hour each day. Not everyone may need to do that, but that’s where many parents find extra time, says Loftin. “If you take away technology, I think you’ll gain a lot of unstructured playtime that you didn’t think could be there.”
This article was originally published in October 2023.
Top image: iStock
