Kids need physical play to learn, adults too
Stop giving your kids screens
Modern life is difficult but too many parents use their ‘busyness’ as an excuse to parent their children into an active lifestyle.
Enrolling your kids in organized sports isn’t going to counteract sitting them in front of a screen for hours a day. The stats are staggering: By age 8 kids AVERAGE 6 hours a DAY on screens and that AVERAGE jumps to 9 hours a DAY by the time they hit 11. We have to do better, our kids deserve an athletic childhood.
Otherwise we’ll be robbing an entire generation of the ability to learn, explore, fail, try again, and achieve in ways only physical play can accomplish.
Exploration is the foundation of play
Children’s first ability to learn is through their bodies.
The famous psychologist Jean Piaget outlined 4 important stages of development for children, all rooted in play. The first stage is movement and exploration with the body. At its foundation, physical movement is a great teacher through experience.
When you subject a child to hours of screen time you cut them off from a crucial part of their development.
No matter their age, kids learn profound lessons through physical exploration.
1.Understand their physical capabilities
Kids need to know risk and capability with their bodies.
Too many parents shield their kids from falls and scrapes when that’s exactly what they need to experience. Kids need to test the limits of their balance, coordination, agility, speed, and know when it’s too much. Parents can’t teach these lessons, kids need to FEEL them in the body.
This is why playgrounds exist, they help lead kids towards their physical limits and teach them how to overcome them safely or not at all.
2.Learn to overcome fear
If kids first learn through the body than the body is a valuable teacher beyond the physical.
When you encourage your child to take on a physical challenge you bring them face to face with fear. This could be fear of the activity, fear of competition, fear of failure, fear of injury, and a whole list of other types of fears. By stewarding your child through their fear you teach them that fear is an illusion and can be broken through.
When they do this in their body it’s a real lesson they won’t soon forget “I can’t believe I did that!”
3.Inspire them to achieve excellence
Kids need to believe that excellence is attainable, and parents need to encourage them but also help them understand the reality of what aiming for excellence entails.
Physical challenges are difficult and children see the hard work and dedication necessary to become excellent. The world of elite athletes exists to inspire spectators, but especially children, to work hard in their own pursuits. Athletics help kids dream big but with the necessary condition that they work hard and accept the results along the way.
Most importantly, encouraging a child towards excellence with their body teaches them to never settle for what’s expected and that their own sacrifices determine their achievements.
Takeaways
The takeaway for children is clear but the same reasons we encourage children are the same reasons you need to participate in sports yourself.
Too many adults give up on themselves and forget the importance of physical play to their ability to grow and learn. We stop exploring with our bodies and resign ourselves to ageing disgracefully. When we should instead rekindle the same love of physical play that animates the child’s brain to keep forever young at heart despite our ageing bodies.
Just because we aren’t kids any more doesn’t mean we can’t lean on the wisdom of youth that’s harnessed through moving our bodies in creative and exploratory ways.
Now it’s not the same when we’re adults, obviously. And many adults don’t know where to start or how to get back into activity in a way that recreates the love of motion they had as kids. So how do you find the balance between pushing your body and preserving it as you age?
The key is finding out for yourself, but if you need some guidance I’m always here to help!