Speaker 1Hello and welcome to the How Not to Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation. This is episode 34 and today I want to talk about the importance of play for our children. Now, at my parenting seminars and workshops, I am often asked about how much time school-aged children should have to play each day. The common issues seem to be around after-school activities and homework often leave very little time for anything else. Now, my answer is always the same. I truly and genuinely believe play is the single most important activity for our children to engage in each and every day for at least one day. Now, let that sink in for a moment and then I'll explain why. The research evidence is overwhelming in documenting the power of play for children's emotional well-being, their social development and, wait for it, their academic achievement. So, play really is a child's work. It's how they process their days. It's how they consolidate information. It's how they get to practice and rehearse things. It's how they learn to play. It's how they learn to in a safe place, in a safe space, at home or with friends. So, it is really important that we kind of take that on board and look to make some real changes. In this week's podcast episode, I really want to share with you the top five reasons why we should be scheduling play into our children's day and where necessary, because obviously we've got, our children have got commitments with it, whether they're after-school activities or homework. But with this knowledge, I'm really hoping that you'll take an honest look at your child's school week schedule and maybe look to make some changes so that we can actually factor in these aspects of what we're doing, these aspects of play, so that we can make sure that this is part of our children's everyday lives. So, let me talk you through. The first one is play allows children to wind down and recharge. And for so many of us, when we're, really concerned about our children's emotional well-being and their overwhelm and being able to just kind of switch off, play completely serves that purpose. Children, like adults, need to be given time to unwind after their workday. At school, they spend at least six hours paying attention to their teacher's instructions, concentrating on completing tasks, problem-solving to complete their work, holding back, you know, natural impulses, to play, to chat to the person next to them, to fidget, to move. They are communicating their intentions to both adults and peers. So, play itself allows our children to wind down and recharge because at the end of their school day, when they've had all of these eight hours of this concentration and this holding back various impulses, it's no wonder that when they come home, they're exhausted, they're hungry, they're uncommunicative, they're reluctant to start their homework. Now, that's a whole other podcast episode, but it's no wonder they have that. Think back to, you know, when you come back from work and you'll just need that cup of tea, that glass of water, that decompression, whatever it might be, before you're bombarded with questions and asked how your day was and who you spent time with and what you played with and what you learnt. Children are no different and play allows children to unwind and recharge. So, providing some unstructured time when our children get home from school where they can play independently with their toys, it just makes sure that our children get their much needed wind down time, which is, you know, might be equivalent to our cup of tea and take the weight off your feet kind of time that we might use or whatever it is that we use or need in order to recharge. Our children need something similar and play is a really important because it allows them to recharge their batteries. Leaving them ready to tackle anything. Now, when we're talking about this, the place of this particular purpose, where we put that in our child's day when they come back from school really has to suit our family and the dynamics that happen within that. Obviously, if you've got more than one child, you're juggling multiple children on multiple activities, coming home at multiple times and with multiple pieces of work that need to be completed before bedtime. But if we create the space for our children, we're going to be able to do that. If we create a space for our children to be able to have time to play in an unstructured way so that they drive the order of that play, then it has such a huge impact on their ability to unwind and recharge. And one of the big byproducts of this is that by doing that, they're able to process things so that generally when we're going up to bed, they've had that chance to sort of unwind and recharge things. And we get less of the last minute sort of discussions when we go up to bed. Because they've had that opportunity to kind of work through it. So one of the first reasons why we should be maybe re-looking at our children's schedule to making sure that they get this play time is that it allows children to wind down and recharge. The second reason why we should be scheduling play into our children's day is that play allows our children to work through any resolved issues of the day. And this is such a key one because so much happens in our children's day. Again, just think about your normal day and what's going on and aspects of that that have happened and play allows children to do that. So children bring their work home from school in the form of whether that's unresolved friendship issues or whether it's maybe unresolved issues around their schoolwork or their confidence or how they're feeling about their academic work. And play helps them to work through these issues. Have you ever witnessed your toys to act out maybe an argument they had with a friend or role play a classroom scene or use their superpowers to defeat baddies or take their frustrations out on their siblings building blocks, their jigsaw or anything else that happens to be at hand. Play itself opens up so many opportunities for us to connect with our children and talk through their anxieties in ways which feel more natural, more normal than the sort of formal let's sit down and chat about their day and try and tease out various aspects of information through questioning, even, you know, the most skilled in their opening questioning. It can be really tricky, but actually play allows so much of that information to come out naturally and then we can help our children work through it. So children also feel that they're much less under the glare of a spotlight when we're talking to them whilst playing. So it makes them much more open. And obviously what tends to happen quite often as they're working through these unresolved issues through play is that we don't get this sort of formalised eye contact. So let me kind of explain. When we ask our children how their day is, we're often trying to get down to their level and looking in their eyes to sort of connect with them. But quite often that can feel almost like the glare of a spotlight being shone on them and then they can slightly freeze. And so, you know, we've all been there when our children say, oh, I don't know, I can't remember who did you play with today? I can't remember. What did you have for lunch? I don't know. What did you learn? I don't know. They get caught in that because we're either, for their perception, it feels like we're bombarding them with question after question. But it's also this eye contact or this proximity that makes it feel more threatening. And they sort of tend to sort of freeze when they're doing that. What we can do instead while we're playing, when we play, is that we're often side by side or our eyes, our gaze is down. And the focus is much more on the objects that we're playing with. And that's the process that sort of facilitates the whole being able to work through or talk through issues that have happened. So together, you can work through issues and discuss possible solutions because you're doing it through play, leaving your child feeling just so much more confident because knowing that you are there for them when they need you and play really serves that purpose. Now, we're not always going to spend every moment with our child while they're playing, but it does allow us to have those glimpses, those moments and into their world and what's happened through their play. And you can get so much information from that. So it's really key that our children are allowed to have that time to play because, you know, let's have a look at what we've done. It allows our children to wind down and recharge. It allows them to work through any resolved issues of the day. The third reason we should be creating space and scheduling it in is that play teaching our children social skills, the rules of engagement, the rules of play, friendships, all of these sorts of things. So when our children are playing alongside other children, they learn valuable social skills firsthand, which would be much more difficult to teach in isolation. You know, if we think about when children get together with other children, just some of the basic mechanisms of deciding on what to play requires an element of negotiation skills. Board games promote turn-taking. role-playing games need cooperation and imagination and sharing your favorite toys encourages compromise so play teaches children to be mindful of the feelings of others which fosters emotional intelligence and emotionally intelligent children have better peer relationships and fare far better academically which is what we all want isn't it so focusing in on creating that opportunity now i know it can be tricky i'm not denying that the school week can be incredibly busy so trying to arrange opportunities for our children to play with other children whether it's our home or someone else's can be difficult but it doesn't always have to involve another person you've talked about board games promoting turn-taking and particularly board games are incredible in terms of the turn-taking aspect but also learning what success looks like and how to be magnanimous in success but it also helps our children to learn how to cope when things don't go according to plan when they don't win when they don't do particularly well on their turn or any of those aspects of it so we don't always need to be learning these skills with another child although obviously i would really encourage that and what happens in these situations is that they can practice those skills in the comfort of their own home or in the comfort of a friend's home so that they learn those negotiation skills but we can create those skills and we can create those create some of that equally through things like board games and card games anything that encourages our child to learn these some of the difficult lessons that come social skills in terms of how to behave and respond to other people and to learn and to be mindful of other people's feelings so whether that's you know when they celebrate their win it's being mindful of how the other person might feel if they've lost a board game or a card game so play is really important at helping our children learn social skills and when we're doing role playing when our children might be playing with their siblings maybe creating an imaginative game or even just negotiating play with a sibling who doesn't want to play a game that they want to play these are all aspects of life and understanding those emotional skills because it's understanding
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Speaker 1compromise what it is to take turns playing some one else's game first so that they can then negotiate and then play their own game afterwards that you know trying to explain why they might want to play something in a particular way because then that helps other people get on board so play is really crucial for teaching our children social skills and for those of you who might be listening to this who has a child that might be struggling a little bit at school with friendships who might be struggling around those social skills it's a great way to help them practice some of the things that you might talk about that they find difficult in those practical moments that takes them away from the theory and the discussion and they get to actually practice it out and put some of these skills into motion when they're at home with their siblings where it's that safe space if they are still sort of struggling and finding it difficult they've got that wonderful space to to try so we have got play so far we've looked at three things it allows our children to wind down and recharge which is crucial for getting them to play and to have a good time and to have a good time and to have a good time and to have a good time and to have a good time and to have a good through each school week in terms of their most energetic and the most optimal it helps our children work through unresolved issues of the day the third reason is it helps our children learn and teach social skills in a much more practical hands-on scenario rather than in this sort of theoretical situation the fourth reason why i want you to be thinking about making sure that you shed your play into your child's day each and every day is it enables children to experience risk and develop resilience so through imaginative play children lose themselves in their fantasy characters an anxious child often loses all inhibitions when they are slaying dragons teaching their pupils caring for poorly animals or saving the universe with their superpowers encouraging children to climb trees build dens and put on shows for their friends and family all provide children with much needed opportunities to take risks and work outside their comfort zones kitchen discos goodness me i've had a fair few in my time are also a great place to lose all self-consciousness and get active play is a child's work and their way of trying out new skills whilst perfecting others so providing props and unstructured time is essential to ignite their imagination and develop their creativity a pirate ship a space rocket a magical kingdom or the entrance to another world so we can use play and imaginative play and also that physical practical aspect of helping our children experience an element of risk whether that's climbing a tree the risk is also is always the fear you know the possibility that they might fall but it also helps them to develop resilience around the falling off the apple tree for example each time but it also helps our children if they're not necessarily building dens and those sorts of things but also if they are creating these imaginative characters and these role play scenarios i mean just think through actually going back to this idea about den building and we've all been there haven't we we've all built dens and our children have all had that den building in the sitting room where the sofa's been converted and there's like cushions and stuff everywhere well just the process of building a den teaches our children to develop resilience doesn't it they're sort of you know the cave entrance that they're trying to build and the cushions keep falling over and that keeps collapsing and then they're getting frustrated that builds resilience because they're having to learn to pick themselves up again when things haven't quite gone according to plan and they have to rebuild it and try different things so it promotes their creativity their problem solving skills i think sometimes we get we don't necessarily think through all of the aspects of play and how it teaches our children so many different skills but just you know just that process of den building something that practically every child i know has done at some point in their lives whether that's on the sofa den building or in their bedrooms teaches them so much and yet if you're a control enthusiast like myself who sometimes gets frustrated with the level of mess and you know all over the house that seems to happen when our children play sometimes we can become quite limiting of that you know we don't have time we can't do this we've got homework to do we've got this to do but we stifle the process of our child's creativity we don't allow them to decompress we're not allowing them to practice those social skills because we're so focused on the tasks that need to be done rather than these skills that our children learn from the unstructured times that we can create and provide at home that i would argue are so much more powerful than these structured aspects of the i'm not anti-school i'm not anti-homework my question is as parents we have to empower ourselves to make some decisions in those moments to say actually i'm not going to battle my child tonight over that homework i'm going to give them that half an hour or the 20 minutes that their teacher has suggested the homework should take and then we're going to call time because i know how important it is for my child to have that unstructured time to be able to work through some of those social skills to be able to decompress to allow them to experience risk in a safe space and to also develop their resilience through their play and i'm not going to get caught up in the tasks i'm not going to get caught up in my need for the house to be ordered and tidy and organized and i'm going to allow them to have that space and that freedom so the four that we have looked at so far are that play allows our children to wind down and recharge that play allows our children to work through any resolved issues of the day that play teaches our children social skills and allows them more importantly to practice those social skills in a safe unstructured space rather than us always having to go through the theory of it and that discussion of it they can just kind of wade in play also enables children to experience risk and develop resilience whether that's through role play or whether that's through them actually being outside and you know climbing trees building dens and jumping on a trampoline those are the aspects of it and then the final skill that play teaches our children and why it's so important we should be making this commitment is it provides an opportunity to try new skills without fear of failure so when children play they are constantly learning new skills which can then be generalized to other areas of their life so play Playing with building blocks, for example, a young child playing with building blocks, blocks provides an understanding of spatial awareness it promotes a sense of creativity and it teaches mathematical concepts of symmetry shape and geometry so when they're building building blocks when they're putting them together they're learning where they should place things and spatial awareness and what happens when they fall down and what they need to do to make sure that that construction happens much in the same way as they're learning through the sort of cushion building and the den making that they do with sofas kicking a ball around in the garden teaches coordination and balance skills it promotes muscle strength and the use of their senses to orient themselves around their world children learn so much more through play because there's no fear of failure blocks fall down when you stack them too high not all the kicks of the football results in a goal we don't always win the game of snakes and ladders and so on you kind of get that picture structured play can also be used to help children who are struggling in specific areas at school so word puzzles are much more fun than spellings dot-to-dot games which i've spoken about before and provided as a resource are a much more engaging way of helping children learn their times tables making a scrapbook builds on literacy skills without the essay writing the possibilities are endless it's really limited by our creativity it's recognizing that these opportunities for play can teach our children so much more than our structured you know we need to do some workbooks and we need to kind of catch up on things and i'm not necessarily suggesting that everybody is doing that but i do think that we so often underestimate the power of play and how impactful it can be for our children because they're learning by but also unwinding they're recharging they're working through these unresolved issues and so that's why this is my place to be and i'm going to be this is my request for you to make that pledge to be more mindful to look more honestly and more critically at the schedule that your child currently has each of your children currently have and i want you to ask yourself the question if they've got these if they've got activities and other things scheduled how important is that really does my child have space during their week in order to be able to just be and i'll tell you one other reason why play is so so important which i haven't necessarily explicitly stated is that when our children lead very busy lives and they go from one thing to the next to the next inadvertently it's not like we deliberately trying to create a hectic schedule for our children but when our children do this they don't create or have the opportunities to understand that their mind is a busy mind and has an internal chatter so if they are busy the whole time the only time that they are in a space of emptiness of not having something that they need to do is then when they go to bed so if we have a child who has had such a busy day going from one thing to the next to the next the first time they really have to process things and to be connected to their internal chatter is when they go to bed and that's normally when anxieties worries all the sleepless nights kick in when children are provided with a genuine opportunity to play to decompress wherever it's unstructured where it's not task focused and they can lose themselves in whatever it is that they choose to play then our children are alone with their thoughts they get to practice that process of working through things but they also get to notice that their head has an internal dialogue that there is a chatter and that chatter comes and goes and doesn't have to completely overtake and dictate the order of play or the narrative for them because they're able to sit with it and understand that it comes and goes and that if none of the other aspects of play really resonate with you should really sort of you know that should be the one thing that you can you focus in on because if we're trying to encourage our children it's positive mental health if we want to avoid any challenges for our children as they get older around their mental health this is one of the single most powerful reasons why we're trying to encourage our children to have a positive mental health is why play is so important and I hope you can understand you can probably notice the passion that I have for this but why it's just so important because it's important for us as adults to wind down and play is the equivalent for our children so I'm really encouraging you to take another look at your child's schedule this week and block out their one hour play times with all the benefits you won't regret it my give this week is a checklist of all these five reasons why children need to play and hopefully that will serve as a reminder and a prompt so head over to my free resource library drmaryhant.com forward slash library where you'll find the link to download the resource all you need to do is pop in your email address and you'll get instant access not only to this week's resource but all the other free resources across all my podcast episodes as ever if you have enjoyed this episode I would be so grateful if you could follow and review this podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love so until next time
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