Did you know that there are conferences now on how to play with your children? And that books are written on the importance of play for children? How did we get to a point in our society where free play isn’t just a normal aspect of childhood? Somehow we’ve gotten way too structured and demanding about young children reaching predetermined levels of accomplishment – even at 3 years old!!
Here are a couple of great articles about the importance of play.
The first is from The Atlantic:
All Work and No Play: Why Your Kids Are More Anxious, Depressed
By Esther Entin
For more than fifty years, children’s free play time has been continually declining, and it’s keeping them from turning into confident adults
The second is from Huff Post:
If We Don’t Let Our Children Play, Who Will Be the Next Steve Jobs?
by Darell Hammond
I love this quote by Jobs: “School was pretty hard for me at the beginning. My mother taught me how to read before I got to school and so when I got there I really just wanted to do two things. I wanted to read books because I loved reading books and I wanted to go outside and chase butterflies. You know, do the things that five year olds like to do. I encountered authority of a different kind than I had ever encountered before, and I did not like it. And they really almost got me. They came close to really beating any curiosity out of me.”
This quote that I saw on facebook fits this topic perfectly:
“Be careful what you teach. It might interfere with what they are learning.” -Magda Gerber
