Free play vs. structure: Why parents may be making the wrong choice

There is a fort in the woods where I walk in the early mornings. It’s been crafted by children.

They’ve used a variety of materials. A sturdy, overhanging oak branch serves as the center rafter upon which many long limbs have been placed side-by-side in an upside-down “V” fashion, creating a teepee effect. Inside the fort, there are two fat, fallen pine tree trunks that work as benches. There’s also an old tire – a good seat to accompany the benches.

Related: Readers tell us how they spent their summers growing up in and around South Carolina.

My heart lifts every time I see this charming place. I’ve sat inside it just once, hunched over. It was not built for adults and thank goodness for that.

It was built for something – oh gosh, how to say it? – that I fear is almost a lost art: children playing outside, by themselves or with friends. Children occupying their time in a free form void of computer screens and video games. Children working with whatever nature presents to them, not what their parents have planned or scheduled for them.

My brother, the father of two sons, once asked me, the mother of a son and daughter, “Whatever happened to telling children to run on along, go outside and play, find something to do?”

Searching for a more professional answer than my own, I talked with Dr. Bridget Miller, an assistant professor in the Department of Instruction and Teacher Education at the University of South Carolina. She has a son who is 9 years old and a daughter who is 7.

She said she is a proponent of “just letting children go outside and play vs. the over-structuring, hovering parent. We know that there is a lot of brain development going on during free play. If the fort is starting to fall down, and they don’t know what to do, they’ll figure it out. If they fall and get hurt, they are going to learn to get right back up.

“Free play teaches children to be problem solvers and decisionmakers. It helps them to think critically. They are going to learn to work things out – conflict resolution.”

So true. Especially for all us baby boomers – and those even older than that – who, save for hours in school, likely spent more time outside than in.

Did we fight with our neighborhood friends? Of course we did.

Who would be captain of the team? Where should the fort be built? Who picked their boogers? But we worked it out sooner than later, because playing with buddies was much more fun than going it alone.

Did we get hurt? Of course we did. Raw toes from riding bicycles barefooted. Broken arms from falling out of trees. Burned fingers from holding onto firecrackers too long. Some children, like yours truly who grew up in the sandy soil of Columbia, even managed to get intestinal worms. No kidding. But we survived.

Did we think critically? Resolve conflicts? Solve problems? Make decisions? Of course we did, but we didn’t know it. We just played. For hours and hours, until the sun set and sometimes even into the evenings when the dark added a mysterious aspect to all our many made-up activities.

So what has happened since those halcyon days of children running loose through neighborhoods, with, I might add, their dogs alongside them, running loose too?

According to the American Journal of Pediatrics, Miller said, “Free play, especially in the outdoors, is all but extinct. The literature demonstrates that since 1955, there has been a continual decline in the children’s amount of free play.”

Miller noted two possible contributing factors. One, “parental fear” – protecting children from danger.

And two, “parental desire” – prepping them for future success by being enrolled in early academic programs, etc.

“Research,” Miller said, “is showing that both of these ideologies are wrong as we remove free play from children’s lives.”

Her “soapbox,” she said, is as follows: “Children need the ability to imagine. It is what makes new possibilities and ideas come to life. We need to generate new thinkers not afraid to take risks and think outside the box. To think of things we never considered before. When we stifle this we create a generation of children who turn to authority (parent/teacher) to tell them what to do or provide the answer … It is in free play they learn to develop critical thinking skills. They learn to negotiate spaces between themselves and other children. (They) can grow and develop into thinkers, explorers and innovators.”

Interesting stuff.

And some good news too, which has everything to do with the fort in the woods near my home.

“Free play is a big topic right now,” Miller said. “In the academic world, there are a lot of people shifting back to the benefits of free play.”

So run on now.

Go outside and play.

And be home by dark.

This story was originally published May 14, 2016 at 11:00 AM with the headline "Free play vs. structure: Why parents may be making the wrong choice."