Are Children Losing the Ability to Play? What We Gain and Lose When Every Minute Is Scheduled

 I grew up in a public housing project, and it was full of kids. After school, our moms would say go outside and play until dinner time. The kids in the neighborhood would spend hours outside making up games, building forts, riding bikes, and finding creative ways to entertain ourselves. Adults weren't organizing every minute of our day. We figured things out as we went along.

Today, many children go from school to sports practice, dance lessons, tutoring, music classes, and other organized activities. While these opportunities can be wonderful, I sometimes wonder if we've lost something important along the way.

Are children getting enough time to simply play?

In addition, are parents losing their ability to do what they want to do? My nieces, who each have 2 kids, go from rec soccer to travel soccer to rec baseball to travel baseball to dance lessons to gymnastics class. After school, they are always running around and don’t really have time to relax and think!

Even researchers have noticed that free, unstructured play has been declining for decades. Psychologist Peter Gray has written extensively about how children have fewer opportunities for self-directed play than previous generations. At the same time, rates of anxiety and other mental health challenges among children have increased. While many factors contribute to these trends, it raises an important question: what happens when children have less freedom to explore, create, and solve problems on their own?

More recent research has also found that unstructured play in the preschool years predicts stronger self-regulation abilities later in childhood. Self-regulation—the ability to manage emotions, focus attention, and control impulses—is one of the strongest predictors of future academic and social success.

In other words, what may look like "just playing" is actually some of the most important learning a child can do. It’s much more than having fun.

When children create their own games, they learn how to negotiate, compromise, solve conflicts, and think creatively. They learn resilience when things don't go as planned. They develop confidence because they are making decisions without an adult directing every step.

I can remember having physical fights one day and being back playing together the next day.

Today, the coach is making all the decisions - deciding what position everyone will play. The kids have no input.

Plus, skills like negotiating and compromise can't always be taught through instruction alone.

This doesn't mean organized sports and activities are bad. Sports teach teamwork and perseverance. Music lessons build discipline and focus. The issue isn't participation…it's balance.

Children need opportunities to be bored.

They need time to build a fort out of blankets, invent an imaginary world, or spend an afternoon creating something without a specific goal or outcome.

One program that recognizes the importance of imaginative play is Filament Theatre's FORTS: Build Your Own Adventure. Instead of sitting and watching a performance, families are invited to build, create, explore, and tell stories together using simple materials and their imaginations. 

Experiences like this remind us that children don't always need more structured activities. Sometimes they need more opportunities to lead their own adventures.

Other programs, including nature schools, forest schools, adventure playgrounds, and loose-parts play spaces, are built around the same idea: children learn best when they have the freedom to explore.

As parents, grandparents, and educators, it may be worth asking ourselves a simple question:

Have we become so focused on providing opportunities and wanting our kids to win at whatever sport or activity they are involved with that we've forgotten to leave room for play?

Research continues to show that free play supports creativity, problem-solving, emotional regulation, and social development. In many ways, play is the work of childhood.

Perhaps one of the greatest gifts we can give children is not another activity on the calendar, but the time and space to create an adventure of their own.

So…anybody have a big cardboard box and some sheets?