Photo by yotrak - Getty Images
Playground - Getty Images
If you grew up in the 1970s or earlier, you were among the last generations to fully own their childhoods.
In America today, most children are heavily supervised, scheduled and monitored by their hovering parents. Many others receive similar treatment at the hands of e-devices, so called “electronic babysitters.” Either way, many kids are missing the essential experience that allows them to truly possess their childhood years.
That experience is unstructured play, or what some researchers call “free play,” with an emphasis on free.
Like many from that era, my summer and weekend days, as well as after school time, were largely mine to do with as I pleased. In summer, I usually left the house after breakfast and returned only for lunch, supper and bathroom breaks, frequently calling it a day well after dark. Sure, I was assigned chores but would quickly blast through them so I could return to playing.
Our home bordered a small, pristine lake with a forest on the far side, easily accessible by boat or a swim or ice skate, depending on the season. This natural realm was our playground.
Free to Roam
We weren’t supervised. There were no smartphones or trackers to pinpoint our locations. Calling for help required screaming. Outside of school, organized sports and similar activities were pretty much non-existent or very limited. We played football, baseball, badminton and, in winter, ice hockey, but these contests were entirely managed by us. No adult organizers, coaches, referees or the like.
We had toys but, by today’s standards, they were nerdy and crude. Often, we invented our own by harvesting materials from our basements and garages or using what the natural world provided. I recall venturing with a couple of buddies to the railway tracks outside town to harvest empty beer cans left by the litterbugs, stringing them together in bunches to create noisemakers.
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
Basically, toys, play and games were extemporaneous. So what? So, think creativity and imagination. That’s what we drew on repeatedly to populate our days and evenings with free play.
When everything is presented to a child more or less effortlessly, like games on a smartphone or videos on an iPad, and when toys are sophisticated and polished, little is required of their brain except to observe and react. One becomes less a creative participant and more a programmed follower.
Unstructured Play
I’m not knocking technology. Have at it all you want. I’m lamenting that so many children don’t have the opportunity to learn about themselves and the world around them through the lens of free play.
The impressive mental health and social benefits of unstructured play have been well researched. This form of unscripted activity helps children learn to regulate their emotions, make decisions, collaborate and build an internal locus of control, which is the belief they can influence the world through their actions.
In a mentally organic way, we learned how to manage conflicts without some adult umpire, and if we got bored, it was our problem to solve. You can’t teach those skills in a classroom. They have to be lived to be fully learned.
Taken together, these benefits bolster emotional intelligence, the kind most highly correlated with improved life satisfaction, more positive social interactions and greater occupational success.
Creativity Factor
Then there is the creativity factor. When you’re making many of your toys, inventing games, playing make believe and generally experimenting with the world around you, there’s plenty of imagination and resourcefulness involved.
What’s more, being in nature most of the day and sometimes evening, which was the norm in my childhood, greatly benefits emotional well-being, and fosters a sense of awe and wonder toward the creation. Voluminous research heralds the immense value of green time in healthy child development.
Granted, some kids were harmed by this freedom through abuse, neglect or tragedy. There were casualties, missteps and other messiness. But when free play all but disappeared, something vital was lost, and it can’t be replaced by structured activities.
When the 1980s dawned, many parents began organizing and supervising their kids’ activities, often out of safety concerns. The result? Ownership of childhood shifted from the children to their parents, as did their sense of autonomy, personal power and self-reliance.
Heraclitus said, “Time is a game played beautifully by children.”
But only if we let them.
