Children’s Play Time

Children’s play time is a serious subject. As parents, we should think that play time is an essential part of children’s life. But with today’s education system, it looks like children are very busy the whole day. So, it is parents’ responsibility to identify what role they can play to schedule play time in children’s life, so that it becomes safe, suitable, and important part of children’s everyday life.

Let’s go through some reasons why children should have sufficient play time.

• As per clinical research, playing is very important for the development of children because it helps in the physical, emotional, social, and cognitive health of the children. Playing is essential to help out children in development of social skills. Playing helps the children in healthy development.
• Playing is very important for neurological development of child. Through playing, children’s brains get developed and playing strengthens a lot of neuronal connections, which might deteriorate, if not utilized.
• According to United Nations High Commission for Human Rights, play is the right for every child due to its significance in child development.
• Playing helps the children to adjust with the school and also improves their eagerness to learn.
• Overscheduled family life generally leads to lesser time for good parent-child relations. Your child’s behavior and your family life both will improve, if more play time is given to your child on regular basis. When the parents play with their children, they get chance to be with their children and interact with them at their level. As a result, the parent-child relationship and your family life will improve.
• Children find out how to make decisions, share, solve conflicts, be self-confident, and work with groups through unstructured play. While a few children quickly get these skills, most children can develop these social skills by playing with the other children. 
• Play helps children to express, identify, and think about feelings. Children usually follow what their mother or father do or what their friends do. Children have become more responsive for their own as well as others’ feelings, how to handle feelings by conveying them, and also work through the emotions, because of play.
• Children can enjoy life experiences with free play. Children can’t see things in the same way like we adults do, therefore they can utilize play to have better understanding about definite life experiences.

Both indoor as well as outdoor games significantly contribute with the general development of a child. Indoor games improve psychomotor coordination, reasoning and analytical skills. They help building vocabulary and memory. Outdoor games help children in boosting their body strength and stamina. These games also inspire them with spirit of strong teamwork and competition. At times, kids spend time in the free play and playing some unique games. This normally improves their creative thinking and ability.

The author of this article is Assistant Professor, Pioneer Institute of Professional Studies, Indore