Let Kids be Kids ...

At one point in your life, you were a child. Not a teenager in your adolescent years, but a young child. Remember arguing for hours over who won that game of kickball? Or who made the most 3-pointers in basketball? Why don't kids this day in age happen to have the same opportunities? Are parents too overprotective to let their children have time of kid-organized play? Recently I have read an article called, “All Work and No Play: Why Your Kids Are More Anxious, Depressed” by Esther Entin about how declining a child’s play at a young age stops them from becoming confident adults in the future.

Entin makes several interesting points about the decline of child’s play, ways play benefits kids, and the loss of play and rise of anxiety. In the article, Entin says “Gray describes this kind of unstructured, freely-chosen play as a testing ground for life. It provides critical life experiences without which young children cannot develop into confident and competent adults.” In my understanding, that means that there are plenty of adults who have grown up and became socially-awkward, depressed and distressed because they didn’t even get a chance to have kid-organized play, not even for a limited amount of time. Also in the article, Entin mentions “Children learn to manage their emotions through play.

I agree with the points that Entin was making in the article because being able to go outside and play or to have a companion in which you could confide when you were a child was a major privilege that some of us didn’t have.  I think that kids don't have enough time to just let loose and be kids. There is just too much distraction these days. Parents are often so focused on their older children, and even the thought of them growing up that they don't even have the time of day to focus on their younger children. kids should be able to get up, get out, and get active. Even as adolescence and adults, some people still look back and wish they had – had those very rare opportunities to get out and play, because that is somewhat a part of what made them who they are today.