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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Lack of unstructured play hurting kids, experts say

By: Staff Writer

Posted: 09/11/2007 3:45 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

ALL is not well in the playgrounds of the world, says an international group of child therapists, including several prominent Canadians.

In a letter published Sunday in the U.K.'s Daily Telegraph, 270 professionals blame "the marked deterioration in children's mental health" on an overprotective society and too much "sedentary entertainment." It cites a recent UNICEF report that found British children are among the unhappiest in the developed world.

In particular, outdoor, unstructured, and loosely supervised play is missing in children's lives, resulting in "an explosion in children's clinically diagnosable mental-health problems," reads the letter.

Whether it's time spent playing video games and with "over-elaborate commercialized toys" that inhibit rather than stimulate creative play -- or whether it's parents' anxiety about "stranger danger"-- children are getting few opportunitGordon Sinclair Jr.ies to engage in creative, interactive play, says the letter.

"We have to trust children to play," said Bertrand Dupuis, an educator at the Montreal Children's Hospital who signed the letter. "You know, very small children are quite happy playing with an empty cardboard box. These days, we seem to isolate our children from each other, and they aren't given the opportunities they need to play together, to grow as people."

The effects can range from a lack of empathy to fear of the outside world, the experts say.

"One line of reasoning suggests that, unless we engage in symbolic, dramatic play, we don't develop a good sense of empathy with others," said Henderikus Stam, a psychology professor at the University of Calgary, who also signed the letter.

"Play is crucial to understanding what it's like to be some other kind of person."

And when children see so much real and simulated death in violent video games and TV, "it erodes (their) sense of security," Dupuis said.

"I believe we're seeing more children who aren't sleeping well, who are more stressed -- sometimes because their own parents are facing more stress. That's leading to more of them visiting doctors and psychologists -- but also it's because their parents are so insecure about their ability to parent well, they just want a professional to tell them there's nothing wrong with their child."

Winnipeg therapist Carolyn O. Bergen agrees free play is an important part of childhood development.

"I have every reason to support the theory that children need time for unstructured play," said Bergen, founder of Carolyn O. Bergen & Associates Counselling & Consulting.

Free play, in which "the child gets to take the lead in what happens and how it happens," allows kids to try out new behaviour, and work out their anxieties and fears, said Bergen.

The therapist, herself the mother of an 11-year-old and a 13-year-old, said she limits her kids to one sport and one art activity during the school year to avoid overstructuring their lives.

"Play is the work of children," said Bergen, citing a memorable phrase she learned in school. "We have to allow children time to play, because that's how they learn about the world."

-- CanWest News Service, with files from Lindsey Wiebe of the Free Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 11, 2007 $sourceSection$sourcePage

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