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Play
and Physical Activity: Do We Need to Worry About Fitness if
We Just Let Kids Play?
A Cautionary Tale in Two Parts
Part One: The Loss of Play
David Elkind, a professor of child development at Tufts University
in Massachussetts, came to visit us here in Mount Pleasant
in November. A small, spry man in his 70s, he was invited
by Central Michigan University’s School of Education
and Human Services as this year’s guest speaker for a
prestigious annual lecture series. Now this is a man who knows
about children: he’s written well over 400 publications,
including 17 books. He does not give a flashy talk; no multi-media,
not even a cartoon on an overhead. As he leaned against the
podium and sipped water throughout, he spoke quietly but passionately
about how children in America have lost their childhoods.
The titles of two of his most popular books sum it up: The
Hurried Child: Growing Up Too Fast Too Soon; and All Grown
Up and No Place to Go: Teenagers in Crisis.
Dr. Elkind talked about the many ways in which children are
pressured to achieve too early and too much in adult-directed
ways. One of the negative practices he critiqued was a sacred
cow: organized sports, which are becoming ever more “professionalized”
(i.e., leagues for preschoolers, traveling teams for young
grade schoolers, intensive sports camps, etc.). Especially
in the preschool years, children’s physical activities
should not be constrained and molded by adult rules and expectations,
he argued. (The American Academy of Pediatrics agrees, recommending
that children should not take part in organized sports before
the age of six [see www.AAP.org].)
Questions followed the talk. The first listener who spoke
asked in puzzlement why Elkind would be against organized
sports—wasn’t this the precisely the answer for
our problem of too much sedentary activity among American
children in the midst of an obesity crisis? I liked the answer:
Yes, there is too much sedentary activity and of course this
isn’t good for children. So, out of concern for children’s
health and well-being, limit the sedentary activity—turn
off the T.V., limit the computer. The rest was implied: children
will know what to do with themselves and will play.
Now “play,” meaning spontaneous child-directed activity,
may include physical activity. No one argues against the importance
of physical activity and that kids today are too sedentary.
It’s even a problem in the very youngest, formerly squirmiest
children. As described in the journal Lancet in January, 2004,
researchers looking at the low level of physical activity
in three-year olds found that they were hardly moving all
day and were burning fewer than expected calories--because
they were watching television programs or videos. Many health
professionals are pushing for more physical activity for children
because all this sedentary activity obviously seems to explain
why children are getting heavier. But we can’t confuse
physical activity and play--the value of play goes well beyond
just burning calories to keep kids slimmer. And play is on
the endangered species list.
The main theme throughout Elkind’s books, relevant to
all ages of children, is that there is a harmful trend in
modern parenting to simultaneously overmanage kids’ time
and ignore limit setting. We allow and encourage kids to “hurry,”
to become scheduled to the max, pushed along to acquire skills
or possessions at the earliest possible ages, become skilled
in navigating the adult world. We fool ourselves into thinking
kids are safe or even better able to compete in our fast-paced
world, if they are continuously occupied with some adult-designed
or adult-led activity, whether they’re watching or doing.
But this takes a toll on children. Our kids today are tired.
Some are exhausted, emotionally and physically, from being
dragged around to activities. Or, they’re more tired,
as well as more sedentary, from entertaining themselves with
media. Studies have shown links between sleep problems and
watching more than three hours of television per day in older
children (Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, June
2004). There’s a link as well between chronic sleep deprivation
and behavior problems in younger children, often attributed
to and medicated as ADHD. Parents seem unsure about what is
and isn’t okay for kids, whether it’s the 4-6 hours
spent in front of screens each day, sixth graders wanting
to wear the styles of twenty-year olds, or the disappearance
of the family dinner—and family time in general—because
everyone’s too busy doing something else. Parents aren’t
saying “No!” We are not protecting children by turning
them into mini-adults.
Common sense reflects traditional wisdom and common values,
a shared knowledge about the way culture and the world works.
Has common sense disappeared or have our values changed? Our
stressed-out, overindulged children are no more than a reflection
of their stressed, overscheduled parents: middle class parents
are working long hours to maintain their standard of living;
with the disappearance of well-paying industrial jobs, lower
income parents have to work longer hours to put food on the
table. It takes a lot of energy to set limits and it’s
often easier to give in and let kids raise themselves with
media and their peers, especially since everyone seems to
be doing it. If there is no longer a full-time parent at home
in our culture, perhaps we can make up for it by buying more
stuff to keep kids engaged—more electronics, more activities.
The harm in this seems so obvious, at least for preschoolers.
It’s easy to believe that the rules, competition, pressures,
speed, constant sensory stimulation, violence, sexuality,
and acquisition-oriented values of the today’s adult
world (*phew*) might not be healthy for children, especially
young children, intellectually and emotionally. What else
is lost when children aren’t allowed to play? Because
it is not just that the adult world is inappropriate for children;
it’s also that by being immersed in the adult world,
there is no time for the world of childhood. The loss of spontaneous
child-initiated and child-led play means the loss of imagination,
autonomy, originality, and opportunities for socialization,
the loss of a world in which kids create their own rules and
decide how to enforce them, according to Elkind (see David
Elkind’s discussion of the “digital child”
at http://www.cio.com/archive/092203/elkind.html ). This,
in fact, is the topic of Dr. Elkind’s next book, due
out in 2005: No Time for Play: The Over-Programmed Child.
But let’s just talk about the difference between playing
and structured physical activities for children, since we’re
concerned about sedentary lifestyles.
See Part Two: The Real Scoop on Physical Activity in Childhood—coming
in January, 2005!
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