It turns out that all that time spent playing make-believe actually helped children develop a critical cognitive skill called executive function. Executive function has a number of different elements, but a central one is the ability to self-regulate. Kids with good self-regulation are able to control their emotions and behavior, resist impulses, and exert self-control and discipline.My only response at the time was, "Duh." But the more I reflected on it, the more I realized that parenting has changed from when I was a child, back in 1872, and now. When I was a kid, parents left kids alone at times. I remember many afternoons hunting crayfish in streams, snooping through houses under construction, playing on the playground, building tents in the backyard and climbing trees.
Now there's all these classes for kids to go to after school -- gymnastics, soccer, music, underwater basket weaving -- and it seems like kids are spending more of their free time in some form of structure. I know it's parents' attempts to give their kids a little taste of everything and a leg-up on the competition.
For me, this study just confirms my personal belief that kids need some time to themselves to do their thing. And it also doesn't make me feel so bad for being a little bit of a slacker at times. I figure, no matter what, there's going to be some classes and structured stuff, but I don't want BD to have to live her life via a clock.
2 comments:
heck, i remember leaving the house at 8 a.m. and not showing back up until 5 p.m. for dinner, with my lunch in a brown bag in my bike basket or a backpack. We'd ride all over town, explore areas we probably shouldn't have, window shopped at the stores, and just overall made our own fun wherever we were.
i feel kind of bad for kids today--they don't know that freedom or that level of self-sufficiency.
i think it explains a lot why kids live at home until their mid-to-late 20s whereas most of the kids I grew up with were out after high school (even if it was going to college and staying there over breaks) and then moving into their own places soon after graduating college.
I think part of the fundamental problem here is that parents today have been conditioned to think that the world will chew their kids to ribbons if they take their eyes off them for a second. As silly as that is, it's a knee jerk reaction that keeps people from giving kids time alone.
I agree that it's important for kids to have time to focus on who they are without the world's expectations pulling them every which a way. It's one of the reasons why I think that all kids should have their own personal space in a home. They need the private sanctuary to retreat to just as much as we do as adults.
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