It's Okay to Just Let Them Play

When you think back to being a child, most of the happy memories that pop into your head are of things like your favourite toy, game or activity. For me it's making mud pies on the hill outside the house, riding my bike, sleepovers with friends, going to the woods, playing in the water and sandpit and playing make believe games. I recall a distinctly unique element to these things: being utterly carefree. There was no pressure to track my progress in any of these endeavors, no purpose needed to be explained. They existed simply for fun and I was allowed to immerse myself in them with no other desired outcome needed.

Kids still have toys, kids still play imaginative games and kids still enjoy being kids, but there is an ever mounting pressure for kids and the adults around them to justify any time spent on anything. Nursery's no longer predominantly promote kids having fun and making friends, but rather preparing them for education and learning, whilst making friends and having fun alongside this. Baby and Toddler groups must justify sensory play as a way of learning about the world, parents must not simply have play dates with kids, but also put their children in groups that will teach them things, from as soon as they can sit up! Undoubtedly, there are benefits to such activities. Children getting the chance to be around other kids, being around music and toys and getting to be outside is all great for them.

The problem is when you start to view children through a lens of adulthood. Adulthood is a very literal place, in which decisions must make the most of resources like money and time. It is a place where frivolity is something which is often shunned and often only accepted in an environment where alcohol loosens everyone's inhibitions. Being bright and colourful and abundantly joyful, taking your time to enjoy things and doing things simply for pleasure becomes at best something reserved for evenings and weekends, hidden beneath the justification of a glass or two of wine, or at worst abandoned entirely. The pleasure seeking, joyous lens through which children view life is not something to be ironed out of them at the earliest opportunity with a barrage of structured play and preparation for learning. How much preparation for adulthood can you foist on children, before you simply erase childhood altogether?

Parents nowadays might feel utterly embarrassed at their children running around through a Supermarket with their arms outstretched or squealing loudly. Parents might feel frustrated when their children empty all of their toys, covering every square inch of floor space or when they are trying to teach them how to build a tower and the child delights in smashing it to the floor. Such behaviours may be scorned as disruptive or destructive. To those children though, they may simply be flying, enjoying the sound of their voice, delighting in watching the blocks tumble and hearing the noise they make and enjoy watching their whole floor be covered in all their favourite things.

It is undeniable to see that young people are facing a crisis in today's day and age. Growing up has never been easy and many would agree that your teen years can be the hardest of your life. No longer do young people experiment with glittery makeup, instead they view tutorials on Youtube about perfecting your contour by the age of twelve. No longer do they have a flip phone which has one basic game on it, they have the whole internet in their pocket. They do not simply ask their friends how they look, they can now upload a picture of themselves onto an app to be rated by anonymous strangers. They face constant criticism about wanting to sit in front of a computer, by the very people who are making them chronically unable to play make believe games without a screen. What's more, the same people never take the time to sit down and see all the positive things that can be gleaned from the activities they choose, such as computer games. They are taught to sit down, be quiet and focus on something, yet when they choose this in their leisure time, they are told to go outside and 'do something' imaginative, despite their growing inability to do this in the world they live in. The imagination is a muscle, it must be exercised or it will wither away.

They are being forced to navigate a world that simultaneously tells them they must push themselves, focus, work hard, attain good results, fit in, be themselves, look good, be well liked, all the while dealing with hormones, first romantic and sexual experiences, navigating friendships and trying to figure out what they want to do with the rest of their life by the age of eighteen!

Instead of taking heed from the rising levels of mental health issues and struggles facing teens, we are going in the wrong direction. We are pedalling backwards at an alarming rate, focusing so much on propelling our young people towards adulthood that we lose sight of the value childhood holds in itself. So much of who we are is, at least in part, shaped by our early years. Children provide for us an example of one of the purest and most admirable human qualities: joy. Happiness is something we strive for as adults, the long term feeling of contentment we wait for when we have reached all the goals we set ourselves. Joy is something different though. Joy is the first taste of chocolate cake, the feeling of a freshly made duvet, the excitement of seeing snow fall outside the window. Adults have streamlined such feelings into a more narrow set of activities and cloaked them as almost shameful. We refer to our snacks as our 'guilty pleasures,' we don't like to talk about sex too much, we feel most comfortable having a belly aching laugh with friends when we are plied with alcohol and when we want to have a dance, we go to clubs and bars where it is dark enough that no one can see us. All you have to do is see a toddler with cake smeared up to their eyebrows, dancing in their pants without any music on to see that kids haven't learnt this yet. For children, pleasure is neither guilty nor a waste of time. It is the very best reason for doing something!

Children do not only learn through structured activities, nor is academia the only thing worth learning. Children do not just learn how to read or write, they learn how to form relationships, they build a sense of self and self esteem, they learn how friendships work and how families work. Swimming, signing, reading, these are all wonderful activities, ever more enriching when coupled with the pleasure of doing it with someone they love or care about. Spending time together, getting messy and muddy, going out in the rain, dancing, knocking down towers and running round making noise are also worthwhile activities. To say that activities now enable or facilitate learning more, is folly. Children are always learning. They learn constantly through observing people and the world around them, through pulling things apart, through experimenting. They learn about the physical world, language and social interactions and boundaries through simply living. This includes unstructured play. When I go into the living room and see toys scattered everywhere, see my children chase each other and make a tonne of noise, I know that they have been learning and having fun. I have undoubtedly felt pressure as a mother, pressure to sit down with flash cards with them, pressure to take them to various groups (even when they didn't enjoy them), just to force them to be in a surrounding where they are 'learning.'

There is a risk that through teaching our children to be structured, to sit still, be quiet and do things in a linear way that makes most sense to us, we are erasing the imaginative, joyful part of them that makes up arguably the very best part about childhood and indeed children. We must be careful that in the noble pursuit of preparing them for adulthood and the real world, we do not make childhood something which no longer forms an integral part of that real world.