Advantages of Play
"The Case for Play - How a handful of researchers are trying to save childhood." - The Chronicle Review (Feb 2011)
"Research Says" - What Kids Need (June 2002)
"The Serious Need for Play - Free, imaginative play is crucial for normal social, emotional and cognitive development. It makes us better adjusted, smarter and less stressed" - Scientific American (Jan 2009)
The Book "Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul" by Stuart Brown - Amazon and U.S. News and The New York Times Blog (Sept 2009)
"Play's the Thing, a new book argues that play may be the primary means nature has found to develop our brains." - The Atlantic (May 2010)
 "A new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) says free and unstructured play is healthy and - in fact - essential for helping children reach important social, emotional, and cognitive developmental milestones as well as helping them manage stress and become resilient." - AAP News Room
"Parents and educators who favor traditional classroom-style learning over free, unstructured playtime in preschool and kindergarten may actually be stunting a child’s development instead of enhancing it, according to a University of Illinois professor who studies childhood learning and literacy development." - Science Daily (Feb 2009)
"Play, Play, and Play Some More: Let Children Be the Animals They Have the Right to Be" - Psychology Today (July 2011)
"Forget all the media products for babies on the market and go for the classic building blocks, suggests a new study linking playing with blocks with improved language acquisition in toddlers." - The Vancouver Sun (Nov 2006)
"Encouraging children to entertain themselves in mentally active and imaginative ways and to avoid passive, quick-fix entertainment could also reduce boredom. “We provide children lots of entertainment in the form of television and iPods to prevent them from developing their inner skills to contend with boredom,” Sundberg says. Engaging in active entertainment, such as playing sports or games, is also much more likely to produce flow, Csikszentmihalyi says. Developing ways to cope with boredom may even help cure other ills. For example, some research hints that if former drug addicts learn to deal effectively with boredom, they are less likely to relapse. In an ongoing study of 156 addicts at a methadone clinic at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City, Todman found that the addicts’ reported level of boredom was the only reliable indicator of whether they would stay clean." - Scientific American (Dec 2007)
"For children in past eras, participating in the culture of childhood was a socializing process. They learned to settle their own quarrels, to make and break their own rules, and to respect the rights of others. They learned that friends could be mean as well as kind, and that life was not always fair." - The New York Times (March 2010)
"Effort to Restore Children’s Play Gains Momentum" - The New York Times (Jan 2011)
"Can PLAY Diminish ADHD and Facilitate the Construction of the Social Brain?" - PubMed (May 2007)
Part 1 of 3 "Development experts say children suffer due to lack of unstructured fun" - Post-Gazette (Oct 2002)
Part 2 of 3 "Creative play makes better problem-solvers" - Post-Gazette (Oct 2002)
Part 3 of 3 "Experts call unstructured play essential to children's growth" - Post-Gazette (Oct 2002)
Young Children Need to Play!
Self-Regulation, Creative Play, and Television via Unplug Your Kids more at tvSmarter blog Fairies and Philosophy
"Recently, I've had to change my mind about the very nature of knowledge because of an obvious, but extremely weird fact about children - they pretend all the time. Walk into any preschool and you'll be surrounded by small princesses and superheroes in overalls - three-year-olds literally spend more waking hours in imaginary worlds than in the real one. Why? Learning about the real world has obvious evolutionary advantages and kids do it better than anyone else. But why spend so much time thinking about wildly, flagrantly unreal worlds? " - Edge (2008)
"His recent study published in Early Childhood Research Quarterly showed that 5-year-olds do better on motor tasks when they talk to themselves out loud (either spontaneously or when told to do so by an adult) than when they are silent." - Science Daily (March 2008)
The Varieties of Play Match the Requirements of Human Existence - Psychology Today Blog (Oct 2008)
"Children Educate Themselves III: The Wisdom of Hunter-Gatherers" - Psychology Today Blog (August 2008)
"Have you ever stopped to think about how much children learn in their first few years of life, before they start school, before anyone tries in any systematic way to teach them anything? Their learning comes naturally; it results from their instincts to play, explore, and observe others around them." - Psychology Today Blog (July 2008)
Why We Should Stop Segregating Children by Age: Part III—Older Children Are Excellent Models, Helpers, and Teachers - Psychology Today Blog (Sept 2008)
"How Play Promotes Reasoning in Children and Adults" - Psychology Today Blog (Dec 2008)
"Of Robotic Vacuum Cleaners and Free Range Children" - Psychology Today Blog (April 2010)
"From landscape to playscape" - San Francisco Chronicle (July 2009)
Self-Regulation, Creative Play, and Television via Unplug Your Kids more at tvSmarter blog Fairies and Philosophy
"The Changing Nature of Play: Implications for Pediatric Spinal Cord Injury" - PubMed (Jan 2007)
"Kyung Hee Kim at the College of William & Mary discovered this in May, after analyzing almost 300,000 Torrance scores of children and adults. Kim found creativity scores had been steadily rising, just like IQ scores, until 1990. Since then, creativity scores have consistently inched downward. “It’s very clear, and the decrease is very significant,” Kim says. It is the scores of younger children in America—from kindergarten through sixth grade—for whom the decline is “most serious.”" - Newsweek (July 2010)
"Participants were again primed with high-achievement words and asked to complete a word-search puzzle. But instead of describing the task as a serious test of verbal proficiency as before, the researchers called it “fun.” The results of that simple semantic change were profound: not only did the supposed slackers perform better on the task this time around, their scores actually surpassed those of the high-achievement crowd." - Scientific American (Aug 2010) via Evidence Based Mommy (Oct 2010)
"Friendship May Help Stem Rise of Obesity in Children, Study Finds... "Consider a person who usually comes home alone after school and eats out of boredom," says Sarah-Jeanne Salvy, PhD, assistant professor of pediatrics in the University at Buffalo's Division of Behavioral Medicine and first author on the study. "But on this day, she has a play date with a friend and socializes instead of eating. In this case, socializing is acting as a substitute for eating. Identifying substitutes provides a potential way to reduce behavior." - Science Daily (Jan 2010)
"Wondering whether to boot up your child's favorite computer game or send him or her outside to play? Experts from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania and Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., in Princeton, New Jersey, say that outdoor play should be given the highest priority - and not just because it provides physical activity." - The Chidren's Hospital (Feb 2005)
"There is a growing body of evidence supporting the many connections between cognitive competence and high-quality pretend play." - Early Childhood Research & Practice (2002)
"The more children play outside away from TV and computers, the more they laugh, a study by BBC child psychologist Dr Tessa Livingstone has found." - Children and Nature (Nov 2008)
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Kids Not Playing
"American children aged 2-11 are watching more and more television than they have in years. New findings from The Nielsen Company show kids aged 2-5 now spend more than 32 hours a week on average in front of a TV screen. The older segment of that group (ages 6-11) spend a little less time, about 28 hours per week watching TV, due in part that they are more likely to be attending school for longer hours." - Neilsen Wire (Oct 2009)
"Young people spend an average of three hours a day watching TV, and close to four hours a day (3:51) when videos and prerecorded shows are included. TV-watching time is highest among younger kids: 8-to 10-year-olds spend more than four hours a day (4:10), including videos and recorded shows. (page 26)" - Kaiser Study (2005)
"While most teenagers (60 percent) spend on average 20 hours per week in front of television and computer screens, a third spend closer to 40 hours per week, and about 7 percent are exposed to more than 50 hours of 'screen-time' per week, according to a study presented at the American Heart Association's 48th Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention." - Science Daily (March 2008)
"A poll of 2,100 children conducted by the Telegraph has found that half of eight to 14-year-olds watch a minimum of four hours of television a day during term time. Even more time is spent in front of the television at weekends and holidays, with some children more than doubling their daily viewing." - The Telegraph (July 2004)
"A new survey reveals that today’s children are missing out on pursuits such as cycling and swimming enjoyed by past generations of youngsters, with experts blaming the findings on their parents being too afraid to let them play outside. Rather than go out and ride their bikes, the survey says that today’s kids are more likely to be engrossed in electronic gadgets such as mobile phones and computer games consoles, watching TV or surfing the internet." - Road CC (May 2011)
"A Nielsen study last year found that children aged 6 to 11 spent more than 28 hours a week using computers, cellphones, televisions and other electronic devices. A University of Michigan study found that from 1979 to 1999, children on the whole lost 12 hours of free time a week, including eight hours of unstructured play and outdoor activities. One can only assume that the figure has increased over the last decade, as many schools have eliminated recess in favor of more time for
academics.
One consequence of these changes is the disappearance of what child-development experts call “the culture of childhood.” This culture, which is to be found all over the world, was best documented in its English-language form by the British folklorists Peter and Iona Opie in the 1950s. They cataloged the songs, riddles, jibes and incantations (“step on a crack, break your mother’s back”) that were passed on by oral tradition. Games like marbles, hopscotch and hide and seek date back hundreds of years. The children of each generation adapted these games to their own circumstances.
Yet this culture has disappeared almost overnight, and not just in America. For example, in the 1970s a Japanese photographer, Keiki Haginoya, undertook what was to be a lifelong project to compile a photo documentary of children’s play on the streets of Tokyo. He gave up the project in 1996, noting that the spontaneous play and laughter that once filled the city’s streets, alleys and vacant lots had utterly vanished. " - The New York Times (March 2010)
"But today, for most middle-class American children, "going out to play" has gone the way of the dodo, the typewriter and the eight-track tape. From 1981 to 1997, for instance, University of Michigan time-use studies show that 3- to 5-year-olds lost an average of 501 minutes of unstructured playtime each week; 6- to 8-year-olds lost an average of 228 minutes. (On the other hand, kids now do more organized activities and have more homework, the lucky devils!) And forget about walking to school alone. Today's kids don't walk much at all (adding to the childhood obesity problem)... Forget the television fear-mongering: Your child stands about the same chance of being struck by lightning as of being the victim of what the Department of Justice calls a "stereotypical kidnapping." And unless you live in Baghdad, your child stands a much, much greater chance of being killed in a car accident than of being seriously harmed while wandering unsupervised around your neighborhood." - L.A. Times (May 2008)
"Development experts say children suffer due to lack of unstructured fun" - Post-Gazette (Oct 2002)
"Now an alarming new survey from the Children's Society and the Children's Play Council reveals just how unhealthy the next generation has become. The poll of 670 children, which was released yesterday, shows 40 per cent don't go out as much as they would like and 20 per cent admit they spend less than an hour a week outdoors." - Mirror UK News (March 2005)
"Getting Lost in the Great Indoors. Many Adults Worry Nature Is Disappearing From Children's Lives" - The Washington Post (June 2007)
"Neighborhoods are like ghost towns, kids don't play outside" - Daily 49er (Sept 2006)
"...exercising regularly and staying thin will reduce lifetime CAD incidence and death. Thus, if you are highly oriented towards protecting your child from fatal accidents, say by encouraging them to stay indoors, this could actually reduce their safety and life expectancy over the course of their lives." - Psychology Today Blog (Nov 2009)
"Why Day Care Kids Don’t Play Outside" - The New York Times Blog (May 2008)
"Mom lets 9-year-old take subway home alone. Columnist stirs controversy with experiment in childhood independence" - MSNBC (April 2008)
"Play is rapidly disappearing from our homes, our schools, and our neighborhoods. Over the last two decades alone, children have lost eight hours of free, unstructured, and spontaneous play a week. More than 30,000 schools in the United States have eliminated recess to make more time for academics. From 1997 to 2003, children’s time spent outdoors fell 50 percent, according to a study by Sandra Hofferth at the University of Maryland. Hofferth has also found that the amount of time children spend in organized sports has doubled, and the number of minutes children devote each week to passive leisure, not including watching television, has increased from 30 minutes to more than three hours. It is no surprise, then, that childhood obesity is now considered an epidemic." - Sharp Brains (June 2008)
"Is your child ready for first grade? Earlier this month, Chicago Now blogger Christine Whitley reprinted a checklist from a 1979 child-rearing series designed to help a parent figure that one out. Ten out of 12 meant readiness. Can your child "draw and color and stay within the lines of the design being colored?" Of course. Can she count "eight to ten pennies correctly?" Heck, yeah, I say for parents of kindergarteners everywhere. "Does your child try to write or copy letters or numbers?" Isn't that what preschool is for?
"Can he travel alone in the neighborhood (four to eight blocks) to store, school, playground, or to a friend's home?"
It's amazing what a difference 30 years have made. Academically, that 1979 first grader (who also needed to be "six years, six months" old and "have two to five permanent or second teeth") would have been considered right on target to start preschool. In terms of life skills, she's heading for middle school, riding her two-wheeled bike and finding her own way home. It's not surprising that I came to this link via Lenore Skenazy's Free-Range Kids blog. What is surprising is just how shocking a jolt it is to realize how stark the difference is between then and now." - Slate (August 2011)
"Of course, some children are pushed to anxiety through too many résumé-boosting activities. The problem is when this tiny sliver of American children sets the cultural narrative, chipping away at support for additional study time and the after-school activities that less-privileged children need. Already, districts facing budget crises are putting sports and after-school programs on the chopping block. It's like college health centers fretting over anorexia when the greater risk for most students is obesity. In a world in which only 23% of ACT-takers show scores that indicate "college readiness" in math, English, reading and science, and when studies peg the average teen television time somewhere between 15 and 24 hours a week, most children are not at risk of being overscheduled." - The Wall Street Journal (Sept 2009)
"But for many children and adolescents, the problem is the opposite of being sedentary. Encouraged by parents and coaches, many with visions of glory and scholarships, too many young athletes are being pushed — or are pushing themselves — to the point of breaking down, physically and sometimes emotionally. " - The New York Times (May 2010)
"The homeowners of a small community in Silver Springs now wish to ban children from playing outdoors. Their stated reason - safety. Fines of $100 will be leveled on transgressive tykes." - Psychology Today Blog (April 2011)
"Summer is now fast approaching and children should be going outside for the day and hanging out with their friends. But if you drive through a subdivision even now you rarely see children let alone children who are unsupervised." - Mount Pleasant Patch (May 2011)
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