The Link Between Creative Play and Self-Control

      As parents, we all want to give our children as many opportunities as possible.  That often translates into piano lessons, Little League, ballet lessons, Kung Fu, choir...and the list goes on.  We don't mean any harm, we just don't want our kids to miss out.

     Unfortunately our kids are missing out.  We've recently begun to hear from parents, teachers, counselors and researchers that over-scheduling our children can be a problem.  But the reasons go well beyond running out of time for homework and a lack of sleep.

     It turns out that the unscheduled play time that our children are lacking is robbing them of valuable life lessons that simply can't be duplicated by violin teachers and soccer coaches.  Imaginative, or creative, play time requires children to manage their own time, evaluate options and make decisions.  In supervised activities like lessons and sports, the adults take on most of these duties.  The effect?  Children are robbed of the opportunity to develop a critical cognitive skill called "executive function."   Read more...

         

Comments

[Willie]

This kinda reminds me of that chain e-mail that was going around about how when we were kids, we didnt wear bike helmets, etc etc and we turned out okay.

I remember playing in the woods for hours on end, all my mom would say is "be home for dinner."

Times have really changed, and being a parent now is tough, the information age makes us keenly aware of things that were probably around 30-40 years ago, but we just didn't know about them. Heck just trying to get the kids to play outside these days is tough.

[Lori@betweenusgirls]

Willie,
Things certainly have changed! But even giving kids unstructured play time indoors will help them to pick up skills that they wouldn't develop in more structured activities.
It seems that despite the increase in research and knowledge, parenting is becoming more and more of a challenge. We have to just keep doing the best we can and hope that our good intentions count for something!