Prescription for healthy children: Let them play
Fifth-graders in Wheaton, Illinois, play a game during recess. A recent report by the American Academy of Pediatrics advocates for the restoration of play in schools, saying, “play is not frivolous” because it nurtures children’s ingenuity, cooperation and problem-solving skills. the toxic effects of all kinds of stress, including poverty, the academy says.
In the pediatricians’ view, essentially every life skill that’s valued in adults can be built up with play.
“Collaboration, negotiation, conflict resolution, self-advocacy, decision-making, a sense of agency, creativity, leadership, and increased physical activity are just some of the skills and benefits children gain through play,” they wrote.
The pediatricians’ appeal comes as American kids are being squeezed by escalating academic demands at school, the relentless encroachment of digital media, and parents who either load up their schedules with organized activities or who are themselves too busy or stressed to play.
The trends have been a long time coming. Between 1981 and 1997, detailed time-use studies showed that the time children spent at play declined by 25 percent. Since the adoption of sweeping education reforms in 2001, public schools have steadily increased the amount of time devoted to preparing for standardized tests. The focus on academic “skills and drills” has cut deeply into recess and other time for free play.
By 2009, a study of Los Angeles kindergarten classrooms found that 5-year-olds were so burdened with academic requirements that they were down to an average of just 19 minutes per day of “choice time,” when they were permitted to play freely with blocks, toys or other children. One in 4 Los Angeles teachers reported there was no time at all for “free play.”
Increased academic pressures have left 30 percent of U.S. kindergarten classes without any recess. Such findings prompted the American Academy of Pediatrics to issue a policy statement in 2013 on the “crucial role of recess in school.”
Pediatricians aren’t the only ones who have noticed.
In a report titled “Crisis in the Kindergarten,” a consortium of educators, health professionals and child advocates called the loss of play in early childhood “a tragedy, both for the children themselves and for our nation and world.”
Kids in play-based kindergartens “end up equally good or better at reading and other intellectual skills, and they are more likely to become well-adjusted healthy people,” the Alliance for Childhood said in 2009.
Indeed, new research demonstrates why playing with blocks might have been time better spent, Yogman said. The trial assessed the effectiveness of an early mathematics intervention aimed at preschoolers. The results showed almost no gains in math achievement.
Another playtime thief: the growing proportion of kids’ time spent in front of screens and digital devices, even among preschoolers.
Last year, Common Sense Media reported that children up through age 8 spent an average of two hours and 19 minutes in front of screens each day, including an average of 42 minutes a day for those younger than 2.
This escalation of digital use comes with rising risks of obesity, sleep deprivation and cognitive, language and social-emotional delays, the American Academy of Pediatrics warned in 2016.
Yogman acknowledged that many digital games and screen-based activities can nurture some of the same areas that kids get through free play: problem-solving, spatial skills and persistence.
But in young kids, especially, they are often crowding out games of make-believe, not to mention faceto-face time with peers and parents, Yogman said.
“I respect that parents have busy lives and it’s easy to hand a child an iPhone,” he said. “But there’s a cost to that. For young children, it’s much too passive. And kids really learn better when they’re actively engaged and have to really discover things.”