‘Let them be kids!’ Is ‘free-range’ parenting the key to healthier, happier children?
This article prompted thoughts.
It’s a tough but important balance between providing high quality, safe, organised outdoor and adventure experiences that deliver outcomes (and value) schools and parents want AND just letting kids play and roam outdoors and learn for themselves. Stepping back is hard. We’re just so darn keen to get involved! ‘Forest Roaming’ is a phrase we started using which I think encompasses this balance. We’ll write more on this in due course.
Here are a few extracts from the article which resinated:
“Kids spend four to seven minutes outside in unstructured, unsupervised time a day here in America.” She points to a British study that found today’s parents were allowed to play outside unsupervised from the age of nine. Now it’s 11. “That’s such a giant leap, or step backwards, in one generation. So you’re not letting kids out until they’re hitting puberty? That’s unprecedented.”
WHAT? Get kids outside. And early.
“Play is about exposure to uncertainty, having to cope with things by themselves, the experience of physiological arousal – so their heart’s racing, they have butterflies in their tummy.” If children experience those in a playful setting, she says it prepares them.“
100% we see it every-time we step back
“knee pads for babies, as if for the whole of human history babies have been injuring themselves needlessly while crawling.“
This just made me laugh. Knee pads for babies.
