Kenneth R. Ginsburg, MD, MSEd, and the Committee on Communications and the Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health
Published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, PEDIATRICS Volume 119, Number 1, January 2007
Abstract and Introduction here. To download PDF of full clinical report, Click here
ABSTRACT
Play is essential to development because it contributes to the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being of children and youth. Play also offers an ideal opportunity for parents to engage fully with their children. Despite the benefits derived from play for both children and parents, time for free play has been markedly reduced for some children. This report addresses a variety of factors that have reduced play, including a hurried lifestyle, changes in family structure, and increased attention to academics and enrichment activities at the expense of recess or free child-centered play. This report offers guidelines on how pediatricians can advocate for children by helping families, school systems, and communities consider how best to ensure that play is protected as they seek the balance in children’s lives to create the optimal developmental milieu.
INTRODUCTION
Play is so important to optimal child development that it has been recognized by the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights as a right of every child.1 This birthright is challenged by forces including child labor and exploitation practices, war and neighborhood violence, and the limited resources available to children living in poverty. However, even those children who are fortunate enough to have abundant available resources and who live in relative peace may not be receiving the full benefits of play. Many of these children are being raised in an increasingly hurried and pressured style that may limit the protective benefits they would gain from child-driven play. Because every child deserves the opportunity to develop to their unique potential, child advocates must consider all factors that interfere with optimal development and press for circumstances that allow each child to fully reap the advantages associated with play.
No single set of guidelines could do justice to the many factors that impact on children’s play, even if it was to focus only on children living in the United States. These guidelines will focus on how American children with adequate resources may be limited from enjoying the full developmental assets associated with play because of a family’s hurried lifestyle as well as an increased focus on the fundamentals of academic preparation in lieu of a broader view of education. Those forces that prevent children in poverty and the working class from benefiting fully from play deserve full, even urgent, attention, and will be addressed in a future document. Those issues that impact on play for children with limited resources will be mentioned briefly here to reinforce that play contributes to optimal child development for all children and that we must advocate for the changes specific to the need of each child’s social and environmental context that would enhance the opportunities for play.
These guidelines were written in response to the multiple forces that challenge play. The overriding premise is that play (or some available free time in the case of older children and adolescents) is essential to the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being of children and youth. Although the guidelines were written in defense of play, they should not be interpreted as being against other forces that compete for children’s time. Academic enrichment opportunities are vital for some children’s ability to progress academically, and participation in organized activities is known to promote healthy youth development.2,3 It is essential that a wide variety of programming remain available to meet the needs of both children and families. Rather, these guidelines call for an inclusion of play as we seek the balance in children’s lives that will create the optimal developmental milieu to prepare our children to be academically, socially, and emotionally equipped to lead us into
the future.
Headings not here
THE BENEFITS OF PLAY
REDUCED CHILD-DRIVEN PLAY AND THE POTENTIAL REPERCUSSIONS
FACTORS THAT HAVE CHANGED THE ROUTINE OF CHILDHOOD
WHY IS IT A PROBLEM?
FAMILY CONSIDERATIONS
WHAT ARE THE SOLUTIONS?
ADVICE FOR PEDIATRICIANS
CONCLUSIONS
REFERENCES
To download PDF (110k) of full clinical report Click here
About babies and toddlers, the media, attachment, play, work and parenting.
Monday, 15 January 2007
Monday, 1 January 2007
0-5 How Small Children Make a Big Difference
Provocation Series, Volume 3, Number 1
Alan Sinclair, Jan 2007
The Work Foundation
INTRODUCTION
This paper will demonstrate how vital the early years are to good economics, social mobility, quality of life, and consequently, government plans for modernisation and reform. It explores each of these in turn, and shows why parenting and early-year enrichment make such a big difference.
All Roads Lead to Early Years
There is a direct link between the experiences of early childhood and subsequent adulthood. And, what happens in the very earliest years of life makes the biggest difference. Brain development is most rapid in the months before birth and up to age five. If that is disrupted by drugs, alcohol, smoking, poor diet or stress then today’s baby becomes tomorrow’s disadvantaged child.
Once born, a child needs someone to love them and to respond to their needs. Even in the seemingly ‘best’ homes, parents worry about whether they are ‘doing it right’. How much more difficult must it be for teenage single parents with multiple burdens? Research shows that support and education in parenting plus well-delivered, enriched day care, pay dividends to the family, the child and society.
If we do not engage with struggling parents and parents to be then, as night follows day, we know that their children will grow into the least healthy adults who are badly educated, cause their neighbours and the police most problems, and will be unemployed and on welfare benefits. In turn they will have children early and repeat the bad parenting. Current practice is to more or less grudgingly pick up the costs through a miscellany of public services from social work to the courts and prisons, hospitals and Jobcentre Plus.
Schools and teachers are important but our parents, and what happens before we reach school, are more significant. It is estimated that by the age of three, 50% of our language is in place. At five, it’s 85%. Language is either there or missing by the time a child starts primary school. And once a child starts primary school, they are only there for 15% of their time. (1)
What the theory and practical studies of children’s early years show is that there is an alternative. By applying a systematic approach and focusing on root causes rather than symptoms, parents can provide suffi ciently loving homes for children to have better lives. But this presents a challenge to central and local government in deciding where and how money is spent.
There is a very big prize for getting this right. Morally, of course, it is right. It accords with principles of equal opportunity. And, on a practical level, early engagement pays a very high rate of return. The dividend is 12-16% per year for every £1 of investment - a payback of four or five times the original investment by the time the young person reaches their early twenties and the gains continue to flow throughout their life.
Early year Investment economically delivers efficiency and equity. It promotes economic growth by creating a more able workforce and reduces costs borne by the criminal justice, health and welfare system. For government of all shades, the challenge now is how, through early years investment, to modernise and reform the public sector. Efficiency in dealing with hospital waiting lists or the number of criminals locked up has blinded us to effectiveness in reducing the number of obese children or the number of youths prone to violent or disruptive behaviour.
We insist on more formal education and training to drive a car than to be a parent. But better parenting is not just for the ‘unfortunate’ and the ‘feckless’. More affluent homes play with fire in outsourcing their babies too early and for too long. A culture of work and status denies parents the space to be with their children. Italian holiday guidebooks might say how enticing the UK is as a place to take children but our attitudes to children need a makeover.
Getting ‘early years’ right benefits the whole of society. Through economic research, psychology, biology and neuroscience, the answers come out the same: treat what happens in the first years as gold. What is massively encouraging is that improving what we do in early years is already happening but only on a small scale and in disparate places.
In the UK, we think that young children are the preserve of their mothers. The ‘early years’, we unquestioningly assume, are about children and mothers playing - not that important, and certainly not something that real men should spend much time on. Our most dangerous assumptions are the ones we do not know we are making.
This explains why, despite our best intentions, we have got it so wrong.
1. Wishart R, Herald, 13 June 2006
Alan Sinclair, Jan 2007
The Work Foundation
Below is the introduction to this excellent paper. If you want to read the full paper (well worth it) The Work Foundation have asked us to direct you to their site to download the pdf. To do this Click here.
INTRODUCTION
This paper will demonstrate how vital the early years are to good economics, social mobility, quality of life, and consequently, government plans for modernisation and reform. It explores each of these in turn, and shows why parenting and early-year enrichment make such a big difference.
All Roads Lead to Early Years
There is a direct link between the experiences of early childhood and subsequent adulthood. And, what happens in the very earliest years of life makes the biggest difference. Brain development is most rapid in the months before birth and up to age five. If that is disrupted by drugs, alcohol, smoking, poor diet or stress then today’s baby becomes tomorrow’s disadvantaged child.
Once born, a child needs someone to love them and to respond to their needs. Even in the seemingly ‘best’ homes, parents worry about whether they are ‘doing it right’. How much more difficult must it be for teenage single parents with multiple burdens? Research shows that support and education in parenting plus well-delivered, enriched day care, pay dividends to the family, the child and society.
If we do not engage with struggling parents and parents to be then, as night follows day, we know that their children will grow into the least healthy adults who are badly educated, cause their neighbours and the police most problems, and will be unemployed and on welfare benefits. In turn they will have children early and repeat the bad parenting. Current practice is to more or less grudgingly pick up the costs through a miscellany of public services from social work to the courts and prisons, hospitals and Jobcentre Plus.
Schools and teachers are important but our parents, and what happens before we reach school, are more significant. It is estimated that by the age of three, 50% of our language is in place. At five, it’s 85%. Language is either there or missing by the time a child starts primary school. And once a child starts primary school, they are only there for 15% of their time. (1)
What the theory and practical studies of children’s early years show is that there is an alternative. By applying a systematic approach and focusing on root causes rather than symptoms, parents can provide suffi ciently loving homes for children to have better lives. But this presents a challenge to central and local government in deciding where and how money is spent.
There is a very big prize for getting this right. Morally, of course, it is right. It accords with principles of equal opportunity. And, on a practical level, early engagement pays a very high rate of return. The dividend is 12-16% per year for every £1 of investment - a payback of four or five times the original investment by the time the young person reaches their early twenties and the gains continue to flow throughout their life.
Early year Investment economically delivers efficiency and equity. It promotes economic growth by creating a more able workforce and reduces costs borne by the criminal justice, health and welfare system. For government of all shades, the challenge now is how, through early years investment, to modernise and reform the public sector. Efficiency in dealing with hospital waiting lists or the number of criminals locked up has blinded us to effectiveness in reducing the number of obese children or the number of youths prone to violent or disruptive behaviour.
We insist on more formal education and training to drive a car than to be a parent. But better parenting is not just for the ‘unfortunate’ and the ‘feckless’. More affluent homes play with fire in outsourcing their babies too early and for too long. A culture of work and status denies parents the space to be with their children. Italian holiday guidebooks might say how enticing the UK is as a place to take children but our attitudes to children need a makeover.
Getting ‘early years’ right benefits the whole of society. Through economic research, psychology, biology and neuroscience, the answers come out the same: treat what happens in the first years as gold. What is massively encouraging is that improving what we do in early years is already happening but only on a small scale and in disparate places.
In the UK, we think that young children are the preserve of their mothers. The ‘early years’, we unquestioningly assume, are about children and mothers playing - not that important, and certainly not something that real men should spend much time on. Our most dangerous assumptions are the ones we do not know we are making.
This explains why, despite our best intentions, we have got it so wrong.
1. Wishart R, Herald, 13 June 2006
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