Let children be children
Experts say kids need more unsupervised play
Larissa Liepins, CanWest News Service
Published: Tuesday, September 11, 2007

TORONTO -- All is not well in the play world of children, says an international group of child therapists, including several prominent Canadians.

In a letter published in Britain's Daily Telegraph, 270 professionals blame "the marked deterioration in children's mental health" on an overprotective society and too much "sedentary entertainment." A recent UNICEF report that found British children are among the unhappiest in the developed world.

In particular, outdoor, unstructured and loosely supervised play is missing in kids' lives, resulting in "an explosion in children's clinically diagnosable mental-health problems."

Whether it's time spent playing video games and with "over-elaborate commercialized toys" that inhibit rather than stimulate creative play -- or whether it's parents' anxiety about "stranger danger"-- kids get few chances to engage in creative, interactive play.

"We have to trust children to play,"said Bertrand Dupuis, an educator at Montreal Children's Hospital who signed the letter. "Very small children are quite happy playing with an empty cardboard box. These days, we seem to isolate our children from each other, and they aren't given the opportunities they need to play together, to grow as people."

The effects can range from a lack of empathy to fear of the outside world, the experts say.

"One line of reasoning suggests that, unless we engage in symbolic, dramatic play, we don't develop a good sense of empathy with others," said Henderikus Stam, a psychology professor at the University of Calgary.

"Play is crucial to understanding what it's like to be some other kind of person."

And when children see so much real and simulated death in violent video games and TV,

"it erodes their sense of security," Dupuis

said.

"I believe we're seeing more children who aren't sleeping well, who are more stressed -- sometimes because their own parents are facing more stress.