When I am out walking or running in my neighborhood, I marvel at the rare sightings of 11-15 year old children playing outside in some fashion. Playing games such as pick up basketball, hide-n-seek, or eeny-inny-over. Before you call me a tradionalist or an old folgy, I am not purporting that our children need to play the games of yore, but I am suggesting that our children don’t play as much anymore. You may say, what do you mean, they play club, rec, and school sports, sometimes traveling on weekends out of state. They have a plethora of creative computer and video games. Doesn’t this constitute playing even more than we did as children?
The type of play children engage in today is organized, orchestrated, highly competitive play designed, and coordinated by adults. The children aren’t in charge of picking teams, clarifying or changing rules, deciding on who’s back yard or park to play in, or whether to quit the game and move onto another game. In effect, the children are herded into organized play with kids that they may not even be in their community, at times and places determined by adults, and with rules that would only change by a committee of adults. Consequently, children miss out on on spontaneous, child-governed play of which offer important developmental opportunities.
Our children benefit from active, child-goverened play. They get exercise while learning how to get along, negotiate, share, and compete. They may compete against Billy one day, and have him on his team another day. Sally remembers the rules of this backyard game this way, and Jill remembers it another way. The group of kids decide to quit playing football at Joe’s house, so they can ride their bikes over to Paul’s house to play basketball as he has a better hoop on the garage. This whole process provides children opportunities for outdoor exercise, child to child negotiations, and creativity. Organized sports can provide some of this, but typically only for an elite group of kids, while the others stay home, doing what?
Our children are incredibly attracted to video and computer games. Games based on technology typically require children to be inside and sedentary. They can play these games alone, not needing to call a bunch of friends to have enough players for Red Rover. They opt for video and computer games, games less dependent on athleticism and physical activity, and more impulsively and instantly available. Why try and organize an active outdoor game, when I can go on the computer and instant message or play a game? Why endure weather and physical exercise when I can stay in a climate controlled environment pushing buttons to stimulate by brain. Why deal with person’s attitudes, desires, and preferences when I can control what I want to play? These inside technological games seem to stimulate my brain while minimizing social and physical demands.
One may ask, what is so bad about this? These children have incredible opportunities to be involved in activities and technology way beyond what was available to us.
The bottom line is that these new opportunities unfortunately diminish spontaneous outdoor play with other children. And this type of play provided opportunities for children that are sorely missed, hence manifesting problems in our youth. One must ask why the rate of obesity, division and violence in children, to name a few, has increased.
I am not suggesting that these things would get better if children played outside together more, but I am stating that the activities that are getting in the way of children doing such, may be contributing to these problems in our youth. Maybe if we did a better job at limiting our children’s access to technological games, and didn’t overschedule them in adult organized sports, then our kids could play outside more. Technology and organized sports aren’t the the problem, the problem is our letting these opportunities usurp the inherent and irreplaceable benefits of child-governed outdoor play. Maybe mom was an inchoate developmental psychologist, rather than just annoying, when she would say, “go outside and play”.