Let Your Kids Play!

One of the most disturbing trends I've seen for parents these days is the tendency to get them involved in nothing but structured activities from the time they can walk to the time they graduate from high school. I've always thought that you need to give kids time to be kids and find out for themselves what their strengths, weaknesses, and interests are.

A lot of this goes back to when I was coaching youth soccer with my friend Shane. Shane's philosophy, which I shared, was that you gave the kids the fundamentals of the game, and then let them teach themselves how to play it. We'd sit and watch coaches who screamed and yelled from the sidelines the entire game (and that's to say nothing of the idiot parents who did the same, or worse), not letting the kids learn how to play the game for themselves, and shake our heads. Our kids always seemed to play with more enthusiasm, and to be very honest, do better on the field, than the kids who were spoonfed the entire soccer experience.

As I've become a parent, I've definitely seen the wisdom of this attitude. We read lots of books to Duncan, but never once did we drop him in front of one of those ridiculous Baby Einstein videos or the like. If Duncan wanted to watch TV, like the Wiggles or whatever, then we made sure he was doing it actively - getting up and doing the dances and singing the songs, etc. But TV has never been a huge part of his day like it is for some (or, I daresay, MOST) kids.

I think our neighborhood is very much in agreement with the way we do things, too - I see kids out in their yards playing a lot when I'm coming home from work - and that makes me pretty sure that we picked the right part of town in which to live. I want Duncan to be able to discover life on his own terms (as much as he can safely do that) and not have it spoonfed to him by some well-meaning but totally misguided adult.

So read this article, and if you're packing your kids' schedules with more activities than they need, stop. Let them go outside and play!