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Expert Q&A

	By Rae Pica Physical Activity Specialist

I sometimes feel guilty when I just let my children play and do not join in. Should I always participate in their playtime?

Your children will do just fine playing without you. Actually they'll do better than fine – for all kinds of reasons. Foremost among them is the fact that we want our children to grow up to be autonomous – independent, self-directed, self-sufficient people! A child who hasn't had plenty of chances to be independent, self-directed and self-sufficient isn't going to suddenly acquire such character traits as an adult. Nor is the adult who never learned to play as a child going to know how to keep himself entertained. Moreover, that adult won't be able to demonstrate playfulness to his own children.

Consider this: Try as we might, we just don't think like kids anymore. We're not going to find the same things – for example, seeing how many hops it takes to get across the yard – interesting or fun. Such ideas wouldn't even occur to us! But they do occur to children. And as they discover how many hops it takes to get across the yard, how long they can stand on one foot, or whether or not they're faster than siblings or the family dog, they're developing problem-solving capabilities and creative- and critical-thinking skills. Additionally, they're acquiring, practicing, and improving their physical skills. And they're doing it in the best way possible for children: they're having fun!

It's the idea of "shaping" children's physical and intellectual skills, of course, that has parents worried about free play. It's difficult to see the value in it. How can children improve either their physical or mental skills just by playing on their own?

In today's overscheduled society, it seems we've forgotten that children can and do learn on their own, and they can do it through play. After all, we've progressed from one end of the spectrum to the other – from the days of carefree, unstructured play to carefully scheduling, organizing, and managing children's every game. If we hadn't experienced the former ourselves, we might not believe such a lifestyle ever existed – that children really managed without constant adult intervention. But they did. We did.

Because we lay around and imagined creatures in the clouds, we now have the imagination to prepare a meal from a refrigerator full of leftovers. Because we mastered turning cartwheels and climbing trees, we have the confidence to tackle tennis or technology. We invented games when there was nobody to play with and learned resourcefulness and how to handle solitude. We invented games with our friends, creating and re-creating the rules, and learned the fine arts of sharing, cooperation, conflict resolution, negotiation and perspective taking. Because the lives of today's children are so structured, and because I've seen free play disappearing from the landscape of childhood, I worry that today's children have too few opportunities to acquire these important life skills.

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