-Depriving Children and Youth of Play and Sports Activities-

*Note: As a scholar, researcher and author I state my views, which may not always be welcome or popular. Quotes used from Classical Literature in this post are presented in the ‘original’ writing or translation of that time. I am not willing to bend to ‘Woke or Cancelled Culture’ or feel obligated to use politically correct expressions or pronouns!

Throughout this essay, I connect some of my childhood play experiences and how these affected me and how I benefited from skills learned through play. 

…The ability to play is one of the principal criteria of mental health… 

…Creative play is a central activity in the lives of healthy children…

Throughout classical literature, Greek or Roman, the Renaissance period (15th and 16th century), and the Age of Enlightenment (1715 – 1789) philosophers and educators have discussed and debated the “Importance of Play as the Essence of  MAN” because …“He who can not play … is no longer MAN!” Greek philosopher Plato (about 428/427 BC to about 348/347 BC) and English educator John Locke, (Period of Enlightenment-1685-1815) embraced the holistic concept of ‘A sound mind in a sound body’, which actually became later the guiding slogan for modern physical education. 

Once upon a time, the Greek Olympic motto was: “Man both beautiful and good, and to strive to be the best among all others” – kalos kai agathos [καλός κ’γαθός] – not just as an athlete in Olympia but also as a Greek citizen. This is one of the reasons that triggered me to create my own recreational gymnastics club focused on movement and dance, and the Swim team ‘Kalós’ (Greek: stands for ‘beautiful’ technique, ethics, behaviour, attitude, and as people). 

French educator/philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau fostered the belief of educating the child through interaction with nature (Essays on ‘Emile) although he disagreed with English philosopher, physician, and educator John Locke (1632-1704), who believed that children are born with inherent talents and potential, which unfold as they grow. Growth is achieved as a result of experience and learning. According to Rousseau. The growth also follows a timetable, and children have innate feelings of right and wrong, fairness and unfairness.

While German and French educators and philosophers centered their writings on the ‘importance of play’ during the 1600-1850s the only prominent writer after that was Dutch historian Johan Huizinga (1872-1945), who wrote the famous ‘Homo Ludens’ [Man at Play] in 1938. Most likely due to WWII very little appeared on the meaning of play thereafter. 

American sport philosophers seemed to refocus on “What is Play and Why is it Important” from the 1950s to the mid-1980s. It is interesting as philosophers’ writing declined, changes in society brought about the moral decline of society, unethical behaviour, cheating, an increase of crime and social brutality, addiction to computers, video games, and social media.

Children and Play – Its Importance

German Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel (1782-1852) philosopher and educator, is the Founder of the “Kindergarten” (garden of children). Yes, that very Kindergarten of contemporary times! He created the foundation for modern education with the thesis that… “All children have unique needs and capabilities.” 

…Children are like tiny flowers; they are varied and need care, but each is beautiful alone and glorious when seen in the community of peers. They need to be watered and nourished to grow and develop and if this fails they wilt, fade away and die… 

Fröbel’s “The Education of Man” (1826) had a profound effect on the approach to early childhood education. He believed in the development of intelligence and character through activities that engaged the interest of children. His philosophy of education is based on four principles:

• Free self-activity

• Creativity

• Social participation

• Motor expression

According to Almon (2017), play helps children weave together all the elements of life as they experience it. It allows them to digest life and make it their own. It is an outlet for the fullness of their creativity, and it is an absolutely critical part of their childhood. With creative play, children blossom and flourish – without it, they suffer a serious decline. The simple truth is that young children are born with a most wonderful urge to grow and learn. They continually develop new skills and capacities if they are allowed to set the pace with a bit of help from adults (Almon, 2017). She also states that regular play can reduce anxiety, stress, and irritability for children while boosting joy and self-esteem. It improves emotional flexibility, resilience, and provides an increased ability to deal with change. Through play, children can confront life's challenges in a way that they can understand and process their presence. Play helps to nurture imagination and gives the child a sense of adventure. Through this, they can learn essential skills such as problem-solving, working with others, sharing, and much more. In turn, this helps them develop the ability to concentrate (Almon, 2017).

And what does a 24-month old Toddler do out in a grass field for entertainment and challenge? Just, grab a shovel, hop on it and balance! Forget commercial toys!

Huizinga argues that children’s play is linked closely to their culture. Therefore, could it be deduced that children deprived of play are also deprived of their culture? Or what is that culture anyway in today’s living… tech gadgets, on-line learning, personal isolation, loss of social contact, resulting in physical deprivation, and leading to stunting of physical movement and development?

According to Huizinga, there is ‘free or unstructured’ play and there is ‘sportive or competitive’ play where strength and speed are tested, and there are ball games. 

One of the popular games during my growing up years was “Völkerball” [nation or country ball), played in our neighbourhood with dozens of children, 10 -14 years of age. Players had to select the name of a country. The ‘IT’ person would call out a country, throw the ball in the air; the called up country had to dash to catch the ball. If they succeeded they became the new ‘IT… if not, play was continued until some country was successful in the catch. 

What did this game involve? It was neighbourhood group participation, knowing names of countries [geography], communication skills, reaction, speed, catching, dexterity, and FUN. The decision was made about the duration of the game… at least until all countries had a chance to play “IT’, and how often to repeat the game. We also substituted international cities for countries! Summer of FUN!

Huizinga links forms of play closely to the specific culture as play reflects the values and customs of that specific country or region or city. My hometown is known worldwide for its reenactment of the 1375 Wedding of the Duke of Bavaria to a Polish Princess, celebrated every 3 years. Two million people come to watch the festivities, lasting 4 weeks in the month of July. Local children, youth, and adults participate in the medieval game enactments such as dances, jousting, knighthood battles, and the Wedding Play at city hall. Food of medieval times is prepared at a large Festival field with tents and fire pits for the pig roast.

Well, our street bloc had its own enactment! My brothers, Kurt, age 14, designed a small wooden cart with a handle to pull little brother Alois, dressed up as a young medieval girl (and he was cute!) with sister Monika (me) dressed as a Noble Lady (mother had sewn the costume as she was always game for any fun). Of course, Dad always thought his kids were nuts! Kurt had real talent as he punched out several old sheets of metal with a hammer to form a knight’s armour [!], primitive but it worked, painted it black with the knight’s eagle in the center as a neighbour helped him along. The festival’s famous cheers, ‘Halloo Landshut– Halloo Landshut’ – (hometown) were heard along the long strip of our street as the Schloder Gang entertained the neighbours, who watched from their windows, and replied with ‘Halloo Landshut!’ By the way, Kurt became a design engineer and actually created the roof of the Munich airport!

The Duke’s Guards alongside the Gold-Plated Bridal Carriage, Noble Ladies of the Duke’ Court,

I was one of them in the Festival

NO Toys – But Creativity

I must confess that we had very few toys as many of us came from bombed out living quarters. We had to depend on creativity in that post-war era in Germany! My brother Kurt and I were WWII children. He remembered very little. I was older and had experienced frequent bomb alarms, bombs falling, people burning, stuck in tarred streets and dying, and the time when our neighbourhood fallout shelter was opened. Mom had always avoided the shelter because she did not trust it. With good reason, as one bomb fell next to the door and shut off anybody's escape. When opened up several months later, cannibalism was evident. Why is this important? It shaped my life forever and forced me to become creative, imaginative and experiential, and to develop personal survival skills with few ‘things’ and little food. Simple play without toys was our existence whether homemade board games or playing between rubble left over from the bombs or playing in a nearby sandbox.

Play and Benefits for Children’s Development

Experts say, that play encourages spontaneity, freedom (versus enforced rules by adults), freedom to engage or stop whenever, self-development, physical development and competence, dexterity, aptitude, proficiency, risk taking, bravery, language, communication skills, social interaction, cooperation, learning to understand rules or constructing new rules, and foremost nurturing creativity. Through play children increase their vocabulary range as they learn to communicate with playmates, and get their chance to make decisions about rules of play. This is a crucial developmental process, extremely essential to function in modern society.

By age 6 years, the Schloder family moved from the bombed out quarters to an older apartment building [‘Altbau’] further away, built in the 1920s serving 12 families. The street was parallel to a 1-km long meadow with a small creek on the other side of the meadow. AHHH… there it was, the biggest sandbox next to the creek, in the so-called ‘free swimming zone’ [Freibad], designated for public swim because the actual city pool had been bombed. The creek disappeared about 500m downstream underneath the city’s flour mill to provide energy for that site. The Sandbox became the gathering play place for children on our street [4-12 years]. With the meadow in front to play group ball games and the creek behind us, our play terrain was in the sandbox.

Other Moms had decided that mine was going to teach all children to swim because she was the best swimmer, and she taught one by one swimming down the creek with each one of us following her feet trying to hold on! A rude way to learn! I fell in twice but was able to get out on the wooden steps someone had built for entry and our safety. Of course, I always was selected to fetch that pail with water as we took over the entire area to build sandcastles with enclosing walls and cities.

What an effort by everyone! What group energy! Interestingly, two Greek words link education “παιδεία” [paideia) and child/children “παιδιά” [paidiá] denoting the close linkage between the two. Indeed, one could say that these social interactions were a tool for education and leadership as decisions were made on a daily basis of what to take down, rebuild or remodel.

We shared and discussed ideas, agreed, disagreed, and decided whose ideas to use. Sometimes we worked silently, other times the process was very dynamic and at times it was competitive as we voted for the best solution. One of my favourite games was “Add On” as we took an idea and everyone built on it to see what was going to be the final outcome. The very process encourages creative and innovative thinking as well as critical analysis, all of which we children called ‘Play.’ Our undertaking even caught the interest of adults who stopped by to compliment our work, gave suggestions, and an engineer Dad gave us ideas to enlarge the city surrounding the sandcastles. 

“Life must be lived as play” (Aristotle)

“A childhood without play is No childhood at all” (“Project Joy”)

According to “Project Joy”, the most meaningful education in a person’s life is learning to play as a child. Without play, no child can grow up healthy. Play is how children form healthy attachments, discover the world around them, and develop a foundation of competence and self-worth. Play is an essential antidote to adversity for every child. A study conducted in the 1970s in Germany, at a time when many kindergartens were being transformed into academic rather than play-oriented environments, bears out the relationship between preschool play and elementary school success. The study compared 50 play-oriented kindergartens with 50 academically-oriented ones. The children were followed until fourth grade, at which point the children from the play-oriented kindergartens excelled over the others in every area measured – physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development. 

Toni Morrison is quoted in “Essence”, July 1981 (The Yale Book of Quotations): “I don’t think one parent can raise a child. You really need the whole village.” In fact, Aristotle once said, “Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the Man.”

“If we would raise one generation of healthy children 

We could go far in eradicating social violence, war, 

And many other problems in our world” (Charles Whitfield, M.D.)

In 2001, the US Surgeon General estimated that millions of children were in need of psychosocial support as one in ten American children suffered from debilitating mental illness. Between 2004 and 2017 anxiety, depression, and self-harm increased, particularly among teenage girls. The latter is an important risk factor for suicide, so it is not surprising that rates of suicide among children and young people in the UK increased, though numbers remain low compared with other age groups. Probable mental health conditions increased from 10.8% in 2017 to 16% in July 2020 across all age, sex, and ethnic groups according to England’s Mental Health of Children and Young People Survey (Ford, John & Gunnel, 2021, March 19). 

Joe L. Frost (2010) in “A History of Children’s Play and Play Environments: Toward a Contemporary Child-Saving Movement” warns that in the face of loss of outdoor areas, excessive screen time, and increased academic pressure, age-old playtime tradition is fading. “Now, for the first time in history,” he writes, “the children of entire industrialized nations, especially American children, are losing their natural outdoor grounds for play and forgetting how to engage in free, spontaneous play. The consequences are profound.” Frost made the statement in 2010, we can only speculate about the dire consequences in 2021.

Regular play can reduce anxiety, stress, and irritability for children while boosting joy and self-esteem. It improves emotional flexibility, resilience and provides an increased ability to deal with change. Children can confront life's challenges in a way that they can understand and process. Play helps to nurture imagination and give a child a sense of adventure. Through this, they can learn essential skills such as problem-solving, working with others, sharing, and much more. In turn, this helps them develop the ability to concentrate.

…Lifetime [aiôn] is a child playing [pais paizôn] 

And the kingdom is in the hands of a child…

Oblivious to serious concerns, (young) children spontaneously move forward with no goal in mind. Unburdened by rules or structure, interested in whatever comes their way, laughing and fuelled by imagination, immersed in the present and free from regret or anxiety, children just play. 

Benefits of Play for Children’s Development

Play helps children understand the world and discover how their bodies work, and to explore the benefits of play, and find out how to encourage their playtime experiences. For thousands of years, play has been a childhood tradition. Unregulated and unstructured, it has passed from generation to generation. Even during periods of immense challenge, such as the Great Depression and World War II Nazi Germany, children found ways to be playful, writes psychologist and researcher Joe L. Frost in “A History of Children’s Play and Play Environments.” But he warns that in the face of too many structured activities, loss of outdoor areas, excessive screen time, and increased academic pressure, this age-old tradition is fading. “Now, for the first time in history,” he writes, “the children of entire industrialized nations, especially American children, are losing their natural outdoor grounds for play and forgetting how to engage in free, spontaneous … play. The consequences will be profound.”

"Play is something done for its own sake," says psychiatrist Stuart Brown, author of “Play,” He writes: “It’s voluntary, it’s pleasurable, it offers a sense of engagement, it takes you out of time. And the act itself is more important than the outcome.” With this definition in mind, it’s easy to recognize play’s potential benefits. Play nurtures relationships with oneself and others. It relieves stress and increases happiness. It builds feelings of empathy, creativity, and collaboration. It supports the growth of sturdiness and grit. When children are deprived of opportunities for play, their development can be significantly impaired. 

Play is so important that the National Association for the Education of Young Children [NAEYC] has called it a central component in developmentally appropriate practice, and the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights declared it a fundamental right of every child.  Play is not frivolous. It is not something to do after the “real work” is done. Play is the real work of childhood. Through it, children have their best chance of becoming whole, happy adults. 

Today’s Crisis  

We can assume that statistics in the USA and Canada are very similar. While children attend online classes, they spend the rest of their time in front of the TV and the Internet, and this, in turn, has led to psycho-social problems like Internet addiction, lower self-esteem, and low interest in physical activities, according to Marsden, Darke, Hall, Hickman, Holmes, Humphreys, Neale, Tucker & West (2020). Cyberbullying and anxiety while on social networking platforms have also taken their toll on their mental health (McLoughlin, Spears, Taddeo & Hermens, 2019). 

Canada:

• After accidents, suicide is the second leading cause of death for people aged 15-24.

• Suicide is the second leading cause of death for Canadians between the ages of 10 and 24. 

• Today, approximately 5% of male youth and 12% of female youth, age 12 to 19, have experienced a major depressive episode. 

• Mental illness is increasingly threatening the lives of our children; with Canada’s youth suicide rate the third highest in the industrialized world. 

• An estimated 1.2 million children and youth in Canada are affected by mental illness – yet, less than 20 percent will receive appropriate treatment. 

• By age 25, approximately 20 percent of Canadians will have developed a mental illness. 

• 70% of mental health problems have their onset during childhood or adolescence. 

• Young people aged 15 to 24 are more likely to experience mental illness and/or substance use disorders than any other age group. 

• In 2016, suicide accounted for 19% of deaths among youth aged 10 to 14, 29% among youth aged 15 to 19, and 23% among young adults aged 20-24

Summary: Children Learn Through Play  

Play is the primary vehicle for optimal growth in childhood. Below are just some of the ways children learn through play: 

• When children play, they are developing skills in all areas of development: cognitive, physical, communication, and social/emotional. They practice and reinforce these skills in a way that can’t be achieved through worksheets or screen time.

• Play promotes healthy habits by actively engaging children in the world around them. This counteracts issues many children face today, such as childhood obesity.

• Play is a natural stress reliever and an outlet that allows children to work through their anxiety and fears.

• Play allows children to test out new ideas and make connections between their previous experiences and their active investigations.

• Children make their own decisions during play; they begin to make connections between their choices and the natural consequences of those choices.

• Play supports the development of self-control, which is critical for success later in life. Children play because they have a deep desire to understand the world. Play allows opportunities for them to regulate their feelings, delay gratification, and negotiate with others, all important aspects of developing self-control, a 21st-century skill.

• The spontaneity of play promotes risk-taking as children interact with materials and their environment. The sense of the unknown helps children develop mental flexibility and executive function.

• Play helps children develop mindfulness as well as feel safe and secure to try new ideas and experiment. As children become engrossed in play, they suspend awareness of time and space, becoming fully present in the task at hand.

Rewards of Healthy Play

• Leadership

• Connection

• Self-esteem

• Wonderment 

• Pride

• Inner Strength

• Joy

AND

• Relieves stress

• Improves brain function 

• Stimulates the mind and boosts creativity 

• Improves relationships and their connection to others 

• Creates energy 

• Develops and improves social skills 

• Develops cooperation

• Play can heal emotional wounds

The Future

I consider myself a ‘Renaissance woman’ as I have always advocated that ‘Play’ is not only extremely important but indeed is crucial for the healthy development of children and youth. Friedrich Fröbel proposed some ‘weighty’ educational statements during his time, and they are very relevant to the current events in modern society. Given the pandemic over the past 18 months, the political ‘Ping-Pong’ game of national lockdowns in the US and Canada, and other countries with stoppage of daily physical play, physical activity, and the cancellation of children and youth sports has done immense harm and damage not only to the physical but also emotional health and mental well-being of children 4-14 years. Research data is just now beginning to shed light on the enormous impact for the long-term future. 

You violated my Right to ‘hang loose!’

Thus, the lack of up to date serious research data and hard-core scientific evidence as information is ‘fed’ to the public, especially medical opinions, which continue to ‘flip-flop’ about, have not only violated children’s rights, deprived them of the natural need to play, but also affected their physical and emotional health and overall well-being and actually the future quality of their life. We really ought to hold those politicians accountable for those outcomes as they indeed have ‘killed’ the childhood of our children, their future, and potentially their adult life… and maybe that was or is the plan or intent after all!

References: 

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