Most children, when asked about summer plans, want time to play. “Yes, yes,” you nod, thinking they’ll really need a wholesome balance of work and play, structure and freedom, enrichment and relaxation. Plus, you don’t want them to get bored.
Of course, you should take a broad, balanced view of summer plans. But in setting priorities, remember play’s essential role in mental growth.
Recall your own childhood play. Maybe you and your friends created an imaginary town and negotiated who got to be mayor and who ran the grocery store. Or you played kickball and tweaked the rules to keep the game fair and fun. Or you biked to a swimming hole, got a flat tire, ran out of drinking water, and still triumphed over adversity.
Or maybe you never had such freedom. Since the mid-1950s, children’s opportunities for free play have steadily declined. With more parents working outside the home, neighborhoods have become daytime deserts. “Stranger danger” has made parents over-focus on child safety. Economic uncertainties further pressure parents to control their children’s lives. Children, today’s parents tend to believe, need to be cultivated — trained and enriched — to be survivalists and winners in an increasingly competitive world. Finally comes the scourge of technology — the ever-present cellphones and video games that crowd out free play.
As their freedom is restricted, children have shifted from internal to external locus of control. Locus of control is a certain mindset. It sees oneself as the product of either internal or external forces.
In 1950, most children reported an internal locus of control and believed in self-determination. Today, it’s the opposite.
Most children report an external locus of control and believe that adults or other forces control their lives. As we’d expect, external locus of control is associated with anxiety and depression. According to many experts, the loss of freedom is a factor pushing children into mental illness.
So, play is not just icing on the cake; or a reward for work. Play is a child’s work; it’s their path to growth. In his 2015 book “Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life,” psychologist Peter Gray explains how the brain is primed to learn through play. For most of our history, we lived as hunter-gatherers and kids learned the skills needed for adult success through play. They roamed the woods and learned about the natural world by pretending to hunt, watching real hunts, and then playfully imitating the adults.
Of all species, humans — having the most to learn — are the most playful. But all mammals, and even some intelligent birds, play; they exercise that in-born drive to practice and create. It’s nature’s way of ensuring we gain the skills for survival.
Through play, children practice emotion regulation, self-control, social skills and problem-solving. Even solo play can be a rich mental workout. Whereas adults talk about their day, children play out what’s challenged them. By creating stories about rivalries or angry attacks and defense, children work to master their emotional lives. Even if your child draws on favorite books or movies, they’re still selecting aspects that help them manage emotional conflicts.
If you’re joining your child in free play, let them lead. Your role is not to lecture about social skills or morality (e.g. “fighting is bad”). Your role as a play partner is to take in the feelings of the drama. Consider each character as an aspect of your child, an aspect that play helps them mentally digest. Play isn’t real; it’s make-believe. It’s free space to experiment and build emotional muscle.
As you make summer plans, remember the qualities of wholesome play. Play is:
• Freely chosen: It’s directed by the group (or, in solo-play, by the child). Players can quit when they want.
• Structured by agreed-upon rules that can be changed.
• Pleasurable: It occurs in an active, alive, non-stressed mindset. Process matters more than any product.
• Spontaneous, creative, and imaginative: It’s removed from the seriousness of real life. Novelty and surprise don’t ruin play; they encourage adaptability.
In other words, the opposite of play is not work; it’s obedience.
We all hunger for such freedom, and you’d love to give it to your child. But to do so, you’re up against the titanic forces that endanger free play. Recognizing it’s not an easy lift, here are tips for a play-rich summer:
Trust your child’s freedom: To determine how much freedom your child can handle, talk with your partner or another loved one about your child’s physical and mental abilities. If you’re worried about your child biking beyond the neighborhood, ask what skills are needed and how you’ll know that your child has them. Remember that children usually slip backward around their parents. Around parents, the child who can cross a busy street may suddenly need safety reminders. And the child who can solve quarrels will, if a parent’s near, run to them for help.
Find, or create, opportunities: Many neighborhoods lack a ready-made playgroup. So, invite other families to gather and let the kids play, while you talk with each other. Resist the urge to monitor and structure their play. While toddlers need their parents to teach impulse control and assure safety, most older kids thrive when they’re alone with other children. Give them space.
Limit screen time: Your child might insist that screens are play, so you’ll take the broader view: Cell phones and video games are designed to addict; they rob children of wholistic mental and physical exercise. Sure, children experience a bit of agency as they click, swipe and scroll. But the tech-world, with ready-made images and stories, provides too-easy entertainment, too-rigid structure, and too-constant demands for obedience to what’s programmed. It’s a pale and impoverished substitute for play with friends in the natural world.
In the Upper Valley, we’re fortunate to still have ready access to nature. By building a fort in the woods or investigating tadpoles in the pond, children learn about their place in the natural world. They make and execute plans, even as they face constraints. Fading daylight, thunderstorms, and black flies all educate children about forces beyond human control. These lessons are a healthy antidote to our all-too-human fantasies of omnipotence. They temper false pride. They teach realism and respect for limits. That mindset, plus inner locus of control, are what’s needed for our survival.
Protecting wholesome free play for your child isn’t always easy. But in doing so, you’ll know you’re giving them the freedom to thrive.
Miriam Voran consults with parents and practices psychoanalytic psychotherapy with children and adults in West Lebanon and Montpelier. She is on the clinical faculty in the Department of Psychiatry at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. She lives in West Lebanon and can be reached at Miriam.j.voran@dartmouth.edu.