Doctors urge more playtime for children

Doctors urge more playtime for children - Yahoo! News (AP)

Absolutely!

I have watched the change from children simply playing to playdate appointments and children with full schedules and little free time. Also children stuck in front of screens of one kind or another (Okay, I'll admit I watched too much TV myself; my son, too much video games and computers...)

Playdates? Guess I'm too old, but I don't remember such a term - or activity. My children span two generations (X and Y), but none of them ever had a playdate.

Not that a playdate is a bad thing - it's just sad that it is such a thing has to be planned, organized, and scheduled. And by the parents, not the kids.

Back in my day (a billion years ago), and even my children's, for a child it was simply a matter of why don't you see if your friend's home? or see if Susan or Diana (in my case) want to come out and play?

"Go and play," our parents used to say. Or "Go outside and play. Go out and play in the yard." How and what this "playing" consisted of was up to us and, perhaps, our friends and/or siblings.

Yes, sometimes such less-supervised play lead to bored and mischievious kids getting into trouble. But if you stayed close to home and behaved yourself, 99% of the time all was fine.

We had lots of sports equipment and toys, also bikes and skates. There was the neighborhood park, the playground at our school. We had more active games, such as tag and hide-and-seek, also.

I used to spend an awful lot of time bouncing a rubber ball against a brick wall then catching it. Really. Or I'd go out in our large backyard and hit baseballs with a bat or golfballs with a nine-iron.

In my fortunate case, there was "The Prairie" - and swamp! - to explore and where I picked wild violets to bring home to Mom. My brother built a tree house and a raft at "The Swamp." In the winter there were board games, card games, TV (yeah...), perusing "Mad" magazines and comic books, just hanging out and talking. Outside was ice skating - and snow! Lots to do with snow - snow forts, snowball fights, snow angels, snowmen.

I loved my special super-sized box of crayons (55? with the sharpener on the back!) - and was an avid crayon and coloring-book user.

Anyway, do you see a common element here? Play used to be more physical, as well as spontaneous. More creative, too, in the sense that we kids were on our own to figure out what to do.

And, of course, there was much less pressure and busyness. We had lots of time to fill. Yeah, we got bored sometimes, but so what?

Some organized play is a good thing. For example, I enjoyed and benefitted from the Girl Scouts and the Recreation Department programs at the neighborhood parks (went to Wrigley Field once!), summer camps (a church camp in my case)... These are good things for a child. But not too much of it!

I'll admit to doing perhaps a little too much chauffering of my own children... Generation X children were starting to get busy, and I fell into the drill as one of the Boomer moms 0f Gen X. Wanted my kids to take advantage of all the wonderful offerings - lessons (so many!), Scouts/Camp Fire Girls, etc... By the time my Gen Y son was born I was starting to burn out on the chauffering thing, frankly!

Bottomline of all my ramblings here: Yes, let's have our children play more! Just simply play more.

Furthermore, moms might want to consider for themselves how busy they want to be "enriching" their children's lives. For example, I have spent far too much time chauffering in my life. Makes for more stressed, tired, and crabby moms - not good either for mom or for the family.

(BTW, yes, I grew up in the Midwest. Yes, my mom was a homemaker, as well as all my friends' moms. Yes, I was a primarily a stay-at-home mom during most of the time I was raising my own children.)