In Need of Free Time

Monday: Soccer, martial arts, Science club, math tutors, robotics, acting class - As children’s calendars become more and more overfilled, free play time is decreasing rapidly. Anna Quindlen’s article “Doing Nothing Is Something” claims that down time is the making of the child as a human being, and ‘doing nothing’ is when “human beings actually do their best thinking, and when creativity comes to call.” Quindlen introduces her claim by stating “Our children are as overscheduled as we are, and that is saying something. This has become so bad that parents have arranged to schedule times for unscheduled time.” This quote reveals the issue’s severity. Kids should not be as busy as their parents, and the fact that even down time has to be planned, is ironic and pathetic. Peter Gray’s TedTalk “The Decline of Play” however, focuses more on how the diminishing down time of children is the cause for a rise in mental disorders. I think children should be able to spend their free time without any structure, which is how it benefits them most. Whether they decide to go out and play, sit in the backyard looking at the clouds or reading a book, it is crucial they have time to themselves.

Quindlen spend a considerable amount of time exploring why children do not have more unstructured free time. She laments that this lack of time is “one of the saddest things about the lives of American children today.” She claims that today’s American children are as busy as their parents, and are not given enough time for “boredom”. Even time with the purpose of relaxing such as summer vacation is fully planned with activities such as music camps, soccer camp etc. In contrary to what adults believe, “doing nothing” is not wasted time because that is when “human beings actually do their best thinking, and when creativity comes to call.” Overscheduling, she states, prevents children from learning to think outside of the box. According to Quilden, adults fear that children not having anything to do will get them into trouble or just have them sit around on their phones. To that, she says “A piece of technical advice: the cable box can be unhooked.” Parents keep trying to find excuses on why children need so much structured time, while activities are actually intended for parents. “All these enrichment activities are for the good of the kid, there is ample evidence that they are really for the convenience of parents with way too little leisure time of their own.” According to Quindlen, structured activities only really benefits parents.

"Since about 1955 ... children's free play has been continually declining, at least partly because adults have exerted ever-increasing control over children's activities," says Peter Gray. Gray defines “play" as self-directed play that child takes on by him- or herself, rather than an organized-activity. Gray describes this kind of unstructured play as deciding for a child's development and future. Dr. Gray asserts that only with life experiences acquired through play time can young children develop into confident adults. Gray claims that the decline in play is responsible for the increase in mental illnesses. “The correlation between the decline in play correlates very well with the roughly linear increase in anxiety and depression among young people,” Peter says in his TedTalk. Gray supports his claim with statistics. In fact, he states that based on clinical assessment questionnaires, “5 to 8 times as many children today, suffer from major depression from a clinically significant anxiety disorder, as was true in the 1950’s. The suicide rate for people between 15 and 24 has doubled and for children 15 and under, the suicide rate has quadrupled itself.” Young people have lost the sense that they have control over their own life, and according to clinical psychologists, not having a sense of control sets a person up for anxiety. According to Gray, play is where children learn that they can solve their own problems, are in control of their life, experience joy, learn to get along with peers to see from other’s points of view and practice empathy. Play is creative and innovative and “of course if you take away play, all these things [joy, control, problem solving] are going to go down.”

I could not agree more with the writers’ messages. I grew up in a Waldorf school, a school that is based on The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy by Rudolf Steiner. In first and second grade, children get at least two hours a day where they are free to do whatever they want. Kids are not given grades all the way up until ninth grade, and even in highschool, still have subjects such as gardening, wood work, art, knitting and eurythmy every day. Looking back at my time there, I cannot sufficiently appreciate the fact that elementary was learning how to fully focus on one thing. How many children today are incapable of watching a movie without being on their phones? I learnt how to think, how to be organized and how to be creative. The idea behind this way of teaching is that any intellectual content can be understood at anytime in life, if these basics [focus, organization etc.] are there. I am now in tenth grade and struggling with an overloaded schedule with Sundays as my only free day. Contrary to Quindlen’s assertion, however, I do those activities because I am ambitious and enjoy them, not because of my parents. The amount of down time in my early years gave me the possibility to do as many activities as I do, without it resulting in a mental disorder, and I cannot be more thankful to the Waldorf school, for giving me that free time. I do not oppose children wanting to play an instrument, or start a sport. But at the age of eight, maybe piano, basketball or dancing once a week is enough.

The messages from both texts are that children need play time in their life, as unstructured play is crucial developmentally, for us to become ourselves and fuel creativity. Quindlen warns us that, , “Perhaps we are creating an entire generation of people whose ability to think outside the box, as the current parlance of business had it, is being systematically stunted by scheduling.” This is crucial for the world as what we learn from this affects all future generations, and for now little people are actually aware about the issue. We still have the ‘power’ to reverse this pattern, and make the right decision. How we decide to raise our children will have a ripple effect on the future, and the way future youths will develop. I am not saying activities are to be completely eliminated, but they should be incorporated in daily life moderately. A lack of childhood free time is a huge loss with tremendous effects on later developments that parents need to be aware of. Children are not meant to live like adults, but should have nothing to do, to think, be creative or just play outside.

Bibliography

Quindlen, Anna. "Doing Nothing Is Something." IEE Review 42.2 (1996): 49-52. Classroom. n.p., n.d., Web.

Retrieved from <http://classroom.brenhamisd.net/users/0188/docs/argumentative_pieces.pdf>.

Gray, Peter. “The Decline of Play.” Online video clip. Youtube. 13 June 2014.

Retrieved from <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg-GEzM7iTk>