Play Today * Parent Perspective

We talk a lot about allowing kids time for unstructured, unsupervised play, but we know there are other ways to play. We also support kids playing under the guidance of coaches, teachers, and of course, parents.

In fact, making time for family play is critical to family well-being. Playing with your kids can mean chasing them around the playground, challenging them to chess, or building sandlcastles together. But parents can also inject a playful spirit into routine chores and activities, like chopping veggies for dinner, shopping at the grocery store, or walking home from school.

Does your family need more play? This video, made possible by Foresters, will show you why it's important and how you can make family play a priority. Tell us how your family plays together in the comments section below!

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Mom says, "Go outside and play." Kids go outside and play. It used to be that simple. But for a number of reasons, few parents these days feel comfortable letting their children roam the neighborhood without keeping a watchful eye. 

Danielle Smith, a blogger on strollerderby, asks in the video at right, "Do you let your kids play outside alone?" Though she admits it's unlikely, she worries about her kids getting abducted by a stranger and simply can't bear the thought of anything happening to them on her watch.

Many parents are equally reluctuctant to send their kids outside unsupervised -- so many, in fact, that our neighborhood streets are now eerily quiet, void of the shouts and screams of playing children. And that's precisely the problem. In the "good old days," kids weren't playing "alone." They were playing with all the other neighborhood kids. 

After all, playing alone is boring. And more dangerous. In the extremeley unlikely event that a child abductor were to be perusing your neighborhood, he or she would be far more likely to prey on your children if they were alone.

We strongly believe that children need time for free, unstructured, unsupervised play -- but they also need other children to play with. So the question of letting kids play unsupervised is one we need to pose not only to individual parents, but also at the neighborhood level.

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We recently received this note from Bridget, a concerned parent who is having a hard time finding playgrounds that stimulate and challenge her 10- and 11-year-old children. We're hoping our readers can help her out! Here's Bridget:

I came across your website and blog via a link from our kids' school. They are raising money to build a new playground to replace the old playground.

And I'm worried.

I'm worried because every single playground renovation in our town so far has taken a playground that was fun for lots of kids and replaced it with a boring, plain vanilla metal structure that is uninteresting for anyone older than seven. My kids are 10 and 11 and they are extremely upset that the really cool wooden structure is coming down, because "they're just going to replace it with another stupid tot lot" (their words).

I would love to get involved with the playground renovation, but I refuse to donate money to an enterprise that is going to put up a boring metal structure. A different parents' group in town did this a few years ago -- raised money for a playground that was supposed to be designed for older kids. When it finally arrived, it was apparent that their idea of "older kids" was maybe five year olds. My kids went to the new playground (and they were about seven or eight at the time) and basically said, "That's it? What a rip off!"

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