But First, Children Must Have a Right to Childhood
Childhood is in danger today. Here’s what you can do.
When you try to visualise your childhood, what do you see? I can immediately see myself running outdoors, playing for hours with my neighbourhood friends, making up games, and going home only because it was mealtime or bedtime. Yet today, a childhood that was typical for me is hard to imagine for most children.
While all children go through childhood, the experience of childhood today is very different. The innate joy and curiosity associated with childhood have been hijacked albeit by well-meaning adults. Adults who want to give their children a leg up by scheduling their every waking hour.
Parents and educators are clueless about how young children thrive and truly learn. Children are being forced to become adults; to sit, listen, follow directions, not ask too many questions, and perform to adult-driven demands. As a result, the childhood experiences of our children today are causing them stress, anxiety, and joylessness — the opposite of what childhood should feel.
What do children really need?
All children need emotional safety provided by loving caregivers, physical safety provided by their environment, nutrition, and the opportunities to engage in self-directed play. Childhood is about wonder and exploration. It is about learning by doing. It is about making mistakes in order to learn. It is about making sense of the world. And about being joyful.
If you look at a child, you’ll see that he or she is always finding joy in the simplest of things — be it observing a bug, climbing a tree or using their imagination to create with the items present around them. It’s the adults, however, who want the child to sit and do what they want. This is counterproductive to a child’s physical, cognitive, social and emotional growth.
Children need to move, run, jump, climb, push, and pull. Young children’s brains learn through movement, and they can do all this naturally while they play.
Carla Hannaford, author of Smart Moves: Why Learning is Not all in Your Head, explains that movement is essential for our brain’s development and our ability to learn. She writes,
“Learning is not all in your head. The active, muscular expression of learning is an important ingredient. Movement also helps the heart and lungs to supply the brain with oxygen, which is essential to optimal brain function.”
What happens when childhood is hijacked by adults?
Childhood is a specific stage of development. A stage where the architecture of the brain is being developed. It is the early experiences that will dictate the adult the child will grow up to be — whether the child will grow up to be compassionate or confident or if he/she will be a critical thinker or a risk-taker.
The seeds of their adult personality and mental health are sown in their childhood. If a child is made to feel inadequate or not matching up to adult expectations then naturally this child will feel anxious and may have low self-esteem. As parents, educators, or caregivers, you could be robbing the child of gaining confidence and critical thinking skills by constantly telling them what to do, by planning their entire day for them without asking what they’d like to do, because of your viewing of them as being dependent and incapable.
While you might be doing this unintentionally, a good benchmark is to reflect on how you view children or childhood. What is your image of a child? In this article, I give you 5 questions that you can ask yourself about how you view a child.
It is our image that pushes us to behave in certain ways. Just like our parents’ and teachers’ beliefs shaped our childhood, similarly, the image of the child in our minds is invariably influencing our own interactions with our children. It is the lens through which we view children.
The Decline of Play
Unfortunately, the decline of free play is a globally witnessed phenomenon today. In one generation in the UK and US, outdoor play has decreased by 71 per cent. Instead, outdoor play is being replaced by more screen time with schools and parents prioritising academic learning over play. Children are expected to recite, memorise and regurgitate developmentally inappropriate tasks such as reciting rhymes, random facts, poems etc. This pressure can damage your child’s emotional and mental well-being in the long run. The deprivation of self-directed free play has a direct correlation to a rise in anxiety and depression.
Lack of play can hamper mental health
Physical activity such as play is known to release endorphins, which in turn generate positive feelings. On the other hand, when children’s days are overscheduled, free play is neglected.
According to research, “since the late 1970s, children have lost 12 hours/week in free time, a 25 per cent decrease in play and 50 per cent decrease in unstructured outdoor activities.”
A healthy childhood would include abundant opportunities for play, which when led by children, makes them feel in control and allows room for age-appropriate risks. However, children, who don’t enjoy these opportunities can become overly cautious and fearful of risk. In the adult years, this can fester into anxiety.
Further, multiple studies have also shown the positive impact of physical activity such as during unstructured play to reduce depression and encourage a rise in self-esteem and self-confidence levels.
What You Can do
When it comes to ensuring a healthy childhood, the best advice might be to do nothing that arises out of your own expectations or ego. All children have the right to get dirty, the right to make mistakes, the right to express themselves and more importantly, the right to play. You need to be the guide on the side and not the sage on the stage. Allow children the time and space to be. Do not overschedule their time.
Be mindful of your communication and attitude towards children. Be respectful, attentive, and truly present for your child. Try and seek children’s opinions on decisions that affect them. Treat your child with the same respect you would treat another adult.
Children are curious, confident, and capable. Let’s not take their inherent strengths away from them!
