Why Children Need Free Play to be Successful in Life

These days we want so much for our children, we buy them everything we can afford, we  drive them endlessly to soccer, dance piano what ever. And for what, so they will grow up to be highly educated for a high paying job? Why so they can give their children everything they want and desire. Isn’t this the American dream?

Of course but along the way we as people have forgotten life isn’t just about having the best or being the best. No really it isn’t!!! I see so many of you hurrying through the world dragging your kids around, stuffing their faces and filling their extra time with addicting video games. I mean I myself am not perfect but something I know my children get that many don’t these days, is free play. I’m taking let um get dirty rough and tough. My kids get outside daily to run around, build forts and make up games. Unfortunately many of you are so busy trying to perfect your child they are missing these important times in their life.

As a parent my job is to prepare my kids for the out side world, well guess what the world is a tough place. If I make every decision and control every aspect of their life they will never be prepared for the world. They won’t be their own person. Sometimes structure and rules are good and bring stability to ones life but children are playful energetic beings and they need to fall in order to learn to get up, free play helps teach them that.

Free play is one of the most important things you can allow your children to do. Free play allows you child to learn social interaction, self reliance confidence, they will learn to resolve conflict and over come fears. All this, from just free play; unstructured and possible unsupervised free play. Now listen I understand this world is not always a safe place to let you kids roam free, but there are options. You have a home, your kids go to school, their friends have homes, there are parks that may require a little supervision, I mean come on there are plenty of ways to let your kids have some alone time with friends and siblings.

Kids need to learn to interact with each other with out interference, results may vary of course be in the end a lesson will always have been learned if not solved on its own. Kids are smart, we give them little credit but they know how to interact, it’s written in our code we are social creatures.