Brian Bennett's List: Benefits of Play

• Since the late 1970s there’s been a 25% drop in our children’s free play and a 50% drop in unstructured outdoor activities
• Since the late 1970s kids time in organized, adult-supervised sports have doubled and the number of minutes devoted each week to passive leisure, not including watching television, has increased from 30 minutes to more than three hours

• 1. Play boosts children’s creativity and imagination

   

  Play gives children the chance to invent, build, expand, explore and develop a whole different part of the brain.

• 2. Play stretches our children’s attention span

   

  Playing outdoors just 30 minutes a day increases child’s ability to focus and pay attention.

   

  3. Play and rough-housing boost boys’ problem solving abilities

   

  The more elementary school-boys engaged in rough-housing, the better they scored on a test of social problem solving. (Don’t ya love that one!)

   

  4. Play boosts self-confidence and self-regulation

   

  Kids learn to become masters of their own destiny without an adult directing, pushing, managing or scheduling.

   

  5. Play forges friendships, strengthens social competence and teaches social skills

   

  Undirected (which means an adult isn’t there guiding and directing each moment) play allows kids to learn how to work in groups, share, negotiate, communicate and develop core social skills they need not only now but for the rest of their lives.

   

  6. Play helps kids learn to enjoy just being in their own company, entertain themselves and develop identity

   

  Ease that guilt when your kid says, “I’m bored, Mom!” Our kids must learn to enjoy their own company!

   

  7. Play reduces children’s anxiety and diminishes stress

   

  A study published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry shows that play is also critical for our children’s emotional health because it helps kids work through anxiety and reduce stress.

   

  8. Play creates joyful memories of childhood

   

  Come on, no kid is going to remember the car pools and worksheets but the swings, jumping in leaves, playing leapfrog in the mud, blowing bubbles, building forts–those are the unforgettable childhood moments. Sigh!

   

  9. Play boosts physical health and reduces risk of obesity

   

  Henry Joseph Legere, MD, author of Raising Healthy Eaters points out: “Rises in screen time have led to the rise of a sedentary lifestyle for our children. In 1982, the childhood obesity prevalence in the United States was actually less than 4 percent. By 2004, that number had grown to about 30 percent.”

   

  10. Play expands our kids minds and neurological development

   

  Self-initiated play improve skills such as guessing, figuring, and interpreting is important to brain development and learning. It helps kids learn to self-regulated as well as stretch critical thinking and focusing skills. 

   

  11. Play builds new competencies, leadership skills, teaches lifelong hobbies, and develops resilience

   

  “Play is what allows kids to manipulate their environment,” says a report written by Kenneth Ginsburg, M.D. of the AAP, “And how you manipulate your environment is about how you begin to take control, how you begin to develop your senses, how you view the world.” 

   

  12. Play nurtures the parent-child bond

   

  Child-driven play also improves our parent-kid relationship.Play offers a wonderful opportunity for parents to see the world from our children’s eyes as well as strengthen our relationship when we join in.

   

  In fact, playing with our kids is one of the few times when clocks stop and stress fades. There’s no judgments, schedules or time constraints that worry us. It’s just a glorious opportunity to give our kids our full presence, be in their space and enjoy each other’s company, and build those wonderful childhood memories. Keep in mind folks, there’s no rewind button when it comes to childhood!

   

  So parents, why not just this week push pause and tune into your kids’ schedule? I dare you: take a Reality Check and see just how how unstructured, unsupervised time your kid has. While you’re at it, here are a few questions to help you assess if play should be added to the “Endangered Species List” at your home.

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• A recent study replicated a study of self-regulation first done in the late 1940s, in which psychological researchers asked kids ages 3, 5 and 7 to do a number of exercises. One of those exercises included standing perfectly still without moving. The 3-year-olds couldn't stand still at all, the 5-year-olds could do it for about three minutes, and the 7-year-olds could stand pretty much as long as the researchers asked. In 2001, researchers repeated this experiment. But, psychologist Elena Bodrova at Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning says, the results were very different.

  "Today's 5-year-olds were acting at the level of 3-year-olds 60 years ago, and today's 7-year-olds were barely approaching the level of a 5-year-old 60 years ago," Bodrova explains. "So the results were very sad."

• Exercise is known to improve mood.

• Since the late 1990s, research has revealed that aerobic exercise  

  • boosts levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a substance essential for the growth of brain cells
• • stimulates neurogenesis—the birth of new neurons
• • mobilizes the expression of genes that are believed to enhance brain plasticity—i.e., the ability of the brain to change its neural pathways
• • prevents brain tissue loss in older adults
• one randomized, controlled experiment on overweight kids found that 40 minutes a day of aerobic exercise improved executive function—-that aspect of intelligence that helps us pay attention, plan, and resist distractions
• A similar experiment replicated these results, and found that 13 weeks of aerobic exercise was also linked with improved math skills and increased activity in the bilateral prefrontal cortex, a brain region associated with executive function
• The brains of physically fit kids showed evidence of more extensive processing during the task. And, compared to sedentary kids, fit kids had faster reaction times.

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• • There are clear goals every step of the way.
   
  • There is immediate feedback to one’s actions.
   
  • There is a balance between challenges and skills.
   
  • Action and awareness are merged.
   
  • Distractions are excluded from consciousness.
   
  • There is no worry of failure.
   
  • Self-consciousness disappears.
   
  • The sense of time becomes distorted.
   
  • The activity becomes an end in itself.
• • Setting goals that have clear and immediate feedback
   
  • Becoming immersed in the particular activity
   
  • Paying attention to what is happening in the moment
   
  • Learning to enjoy immediate experience
   
  • Proportioning one’s skills to the challenge at hand
• the flow experience is an active state that is completely within the control of the person
• The effortlessness that is achieved during the flow experience is only arrived at after engaged focus and goal-directed behavior.

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