Families need quality playtime
Experts encourage parents to make time to play with their children
Amy Cooper could barely keep up with her son, Dane, a 2-year-old ball of energy who wobbled across a swinging bridge, wiggled down a slide and ran circles around a rainbow-colored playground structure without pause.
Looking as if she’d just run an 8-minute mile, Cooper managed to catch her little one as he tried to dart past her again; the two let out an exhausted belly laugh when the chase momentarily ended.
“It’s a bonding experience,” Cooper says about her love of playing with Dane and her 7-year-old daughter, Ashlyn. “I work and my kids go to school, so it’s a time to be with each other.”
Cooper, 31, joins childhood development experts who recognize the importance of basic play — from riding bikes to flying kites — shared between children and parents. With the number of children who are overweight and obsessed with video games on the rise, playtime advocates are even more adamant.
“Clearly, if you were to put on one side of a scale those who play video games and watch TV all day, and compare that to the other side of kids playing outside and doing sports, you’ll see the exact reason why this country has become fat and depressed,” says Dr. David Paperny, a pediatrician.
The NPD Group, which provides sales and marketing information to businesses, surveyed nearly 3,000 parents and found that the average time children ages 5 to 12 spend playing video games is 4.2 hours per week. Nearly half of the children in the study began playing video games between ages 4 and 5, with 20 percent beginning at age 3 or younger.
Cooper, with son Dane, says that in addition to going to parks, the family enjoys a swim at a pool or the beach, riding bikes, or simply drawing with chalk on a sidewalk.
In a separate study, the percentage of young people who are overweight has more than doubled in the past two decades, and 15 percent of children ages 6 to 19 are overweight, according to the American Academy of Family Physicians.
Children experience their greatest physical growth between the ages of 3 and 12, says Rhonda Clements, president of The American Association for The Child’s Right to Play and professor of education at Hofstra University in New York.
“Physical play not only enhances muscle growth, but also stimulates the growth of the heart, lungs, brain and other vital organs for greater development,” Clements said via e-mail from New York.
A sure-fire way for parents to get their children moving is to play along, as children naturally imitate the behaviors and actions of their parents, Clements says.
“A love for physical activity is one of the most important values parents can instill in their children,” she says. “This is possible when parents introduce the child to some of the physical joys — such as hiking, bike riding and taking nature walks — that they enjoyed as a child.”
“Parents will live longer if they stay active with their kids,” Paperny notes.
But there’s more to simple play than the physical advantages.
“Play is the way children learn,” said Cooper, who also conducts academic tests for children with learning disabilities. “If they’re not allowed to do that, their minds can’t expand.”
“For young children, play is the means used to learn about their immediate environment and to increase their language ability,” Clements says. “Play provides opportunities for creative problem-solving and social interaction as children learn how to cooperate and share materials, objects, and things.”
More than anything else, play time equals quality family time for the Coopers.
“Children get so sophisticated so early now that you really have to appreciate every day with them,” Cooper says.