Bring Back Playtime!

I love having my grandson around. Jack has only one job – to play! Through his play he learns how things work, learns disappointment when it doesn’t work and gets downright silly when his Grammy makes funny noises. It made me remember what my playtime was like.

How many of you remember these games?

Red Rover

Mother May I

Hide and Seek

Kick the Can

Spud

Chinese Jump rope

Roller skating or Skate boarding in the street

Building forts and pretending we were King of the Mountain

Pick-up basketball, baseball or football

I come from a ridiculously large family and grew up in a variety of houses and neighborhoods as we moved frequently. My favorite memories took place in a large stone house in Buffalo, New York. The rule was to go outside and don’t come in until the street lights came on. This neighborhood was full of kids to play with. However, even if there was no one to play with, we made up games to play with each other. Some of the games we made up were Medusa, Bombs over Tokyo (yep, post -World War II offspring) and Sock War. There was another one but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was. Most games involved chasing after one another or using objects to throw at each other. Kick the Can was my favorite – we almost always had a lot of kids around to play that game. I had this memory that our yard was huge with so many places to hide. Years later I visited this house and found the yard to be quite small. The point was that it seemed like a vast adventure land full of fun memories.

My kids had it a bit different. We didn’t live in a neighborhood that was swarming with kids but we had a large back yard and bikes for them to ride around town. I remember them having friends over all the time (not arranged) and they would be wrestling, playing karate, shooting hoops, making music or riding their bikes in the woods. They didn’t have a video game console. There were no cell phones and computer time was limited. They did go to other kid’s homes and played video games and computer games. I’m sure they could tell me some of the other things they did but that’s okay – sometimes a mother doesn’t really want to know!

I wonder what the kids of this generation would tell me. When I walk through the waiting room at work I see just about every child and teen playing video games on I Pads, or scrolling through social media on their cell phones. Their lives are more scheduled with structured activities like gymnastics, dance, structured baseball, basketball, soccer leagues, and scheduled play dates. One teen I counseled didn’t have friends, but boy oh boy, did he have a lot of friends through on-line computer games! I found this to be very scary.

What may be lost in this electronic age is emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is important because it will determine your ability to navigate the world and have your needs met. Some of the most successful people in the world have a higher level of emotional intelligence. What is emotional intelligence? It is being able to be intelligent about emotions. It is being able to connect with your own emotions, manage them appropriately, recognize emotions in others and relate to others in a healthy manner, feel with people (empathy), have motivation to work toward goals, have good social skills and adaptability to different environments.  How can kids today develop emotional intelligence if the majority of their time is spent on electronic devices? Will they understand the difference between what is actually going on and what others are choosing to show them on social media? Will all of their text messaging help them to learn the importance of recognizing non-verbal cues such as facial expressions and body language? How will they learn to have imagination if their time is always scheduled? How will they learn to manage disappointment if everyone on the team gets a trophy? How will they learn to make friends if play dates are arranged for them? How will they learn to manage conflict or develop empathy if their world is social media and video games?

Although there is research that the use of electronics may have a positive impact on the brain due to strengthening the neurons that help with focus and concentration, the negative impact is the lessening of social skills. What gets lost? The ability to recognize their own emotions and the impact their emotions have on others, their ability to manage their impulses (just look at Facebook and Youtube!), learn the importance of goal setting, empathy (again, look at Facebook and Youtube), manage conflict, develop leadership qualities and adapt to different social situations. Dropping the electronics and having unstructured play can help build emotional intelligence.

I hope that unstructured play will be a big part of Jack’s life. When I am with him, I plan on modeling good emotional intelligence. If he didn’t get this, he would be missing out on the most important learning process in his life as he wouldn’t be able to relate to others in a positive way as well as get his needs met.

How about you? Is it time to limit your kid’s time on electronics? Is it time to tell them to go outside and use their imagination? Let’s see Jack, where can we play Kick the Can?

Bonnie Lillis, LPC

Clinical Director, NECBT