Unstructured Play Time Disappearing.......from Scribbles & Strays

This article is floating around on the internet. I want to share it with you because I believe there is so much truth in it, things we all need to remember as we rush through our lives and our children hurry to keep up.

From......Scribbles & Strays...................
The care and feeding of creativity.....................
Unstructured Play Time Disappearing, and It’s Making Us Sick....................
February 26, 2009 in Natural laws of creativity, Play, Uncategorized | Tags: NYT, pediatrics, peds, Play, unstructured.................................
A recent pediatrics study reports that 30 percent of kids get little or no daily recess breaks. Another report cited in a New York Times article today, from a children’s advocacy group, ”found that 40 percent of schools surveyed had cut back at least one daily recess period.”
...........................The article goes on to compare test scores between kids who do get recess, and those who don’t. A few days ago, I included in a blog here results from other studies that indicate that without unstructured play time, kids’ brains develop at a rate of two to three years behind what was the norm in the 1940s. What’s more, they grow up to have mental health issues, indicated by a surge in requests for mental health services on college campuses............................
Stop and consider. As our population has increased, open areas for random play have decreased. As communication and media have become more readily available, knowledge of danger, or perceived danger to kids playing outdoors, has increased. The response has been to keep kids indoors, or completely supervised, at all times. Getting out to play soccer isn’t enough. The studies are saying that kids need UNDIRECTED play time. Time to make up their OWN scenarios. Time to fall off of a bike and pick themselves up again, time to negotiate the social structure of their games of tag and so on, whatever they make up, on their own.
And if kids need it, I’ll go out on a limb and say that adults need it too. Give yourself a break. Unplug. Go play.