DEEP DIVE: Why Kids Need More Time To Play

0:28We always recommend Shopify. Brain surgeon, not stressful. Waitress, extremely stressful. What fresh hell. Laughing in the face of motherhood. Yeah, still trying to get my kids to agree to this one. So far, they are not on board. Mommy is trying to nap. With Margaret Ables and Amy Wilson. Not being yelled at by a coach to run another lap because it was soccer time. Yeah. A podcast that solves today's parenting dilemmas. So you don't have to. Enjoy your locus of control. You can call out the window.

1:05Hello, everyone, and welcome to What Fresh Hell? Laughing in the Face of Motherhood. This is Margaret. And this is Amy. And today we're talking about why kids need more independence than they're getting these days. I believe in this. I mean, it made sense. So there was a study. I love a study. This is a great study because I came into this. I'll read you the thesis. Our thesis, this is Peter Gray at Boston College and others, put out the study saying, our thesis is that a primary cause of the rise in mental disorders among children and teens is a decline over decades in opportunities for children and teens to play independent of direct oversight and control by adults.

1:46And I read about the study, I'm like, that's a big claim. That's a big thing. Coming in hot to put on they should be able to play by themselves more. And I wasn't sure I bought it. But am I giving away the ending to be like, I'm a believer now after having like looked at the research behind this? I mean, I'm definitely a believer. I don't like anything that's like it's mom's fault and scene. That's annoying, right? Annoying. It's not mom's fault. But I do think the world has changed a lot. And I now have an 11, 13, and 15 year old, and they are in a very burgeoning independent phase. And I'm finding it is testing my commitment to the cause because it is really scary and like weird scary stuff happens to kids who are out on their own.

2:30And I also think that it's one of these things that we are probably mostly talking about high income, hyper educated parents when we make these kind of statements, because I think that this is not universally true across America about all children. And I think that there's so many variables here. But I do think that in general, that kids only participate in supervised organized play is a problem. Well, I think you're so right. And I'm so glad you started with like, I don't want to spend this episode talking about how moms are jerks because they don't let eight year olds ride the subway by themselves or whatever, like or that moms who do are somehow champions of coolness that the rest of us have to aspire to.

3:15This is complicated. And as the research sort of walks through, we've gotten this way a little bit at a time and maybe we need to like go back to a little bit at a time. So like there are certainly two things that go together, right? Decline in kids' mental health. It's been happening slowly but steadily over 50 years. And the decline in kids' independent play has seen like a very similar trajectory. But correlation is not causation. And I kind of came into this like, why would they even be related? Like, am I really going to grow up to be a profoundly depressed adult because I didn't like dig in the sandbox enough?

3:47That doesn't really make sense to me, but it's not that simple. And I also think we have to say that it's against a backdrop of what is because I feel like people like to say like what the world has changed so much. In fact, the world that our kids live in is comparatively very safe. And like, that's an interesting factor that the safer the world has gotten, in some ways, the more committed to our kids' safety we have become. And it's interesting. Like our kids, I've been reading that book, Tell No One, about the troubles, the Irish troubles. And it's like, you know, these kids are just wandering through a war zone 24 hours a day, like going to school.

4:25If you've watched the show Derry Girls, it's so great if you haven't seen it. But, you know, our kids are growing up in comparatively calm times. And safer times comparatively sometimes. And also more supervisable, right? Like, you know, we just went out and let's go back to the 70s when I was growing up. And let's go back. You know, I came home from school, changed into my dungarees as quickly as I could. Had a cigarette and a beer. Got down to playing in the backyard. I wolfed down some ho-hos. Remember those? They were like snack cakes. I don't have to remember them. I still have them in my kitchen, Amy.

5:08How dare you? Little Debbie's, you know, something like that. Little Kool-Aid. And off I went. And I was like not to darken the kitchen doorstep until the church bells at the corner rang, which was about 620. and that was like the neighborhood like olly olly oxen free everybody has to go home for dinner now streetlights are on time to come home until the streetlights came on like it really if you didn't grow up during that time but you've watched stranger things and the kids just like do whatever and ride around on their bikes and have whole like worlds of adventure that the adults aren't read in on that's like that is kind of what it was like except for the aliens right and we would play our neighbors we would play baseball in the backyard make up our own rules solve our own arguments.

5:49Did my sister get a baseball bat straight to the face at one point and break her nose? She did and had to go to the hospital. Yes. I mean, there is inherent danger in these relationships. And I will say, I'm joking about my sister, but also a lot of bad stuff happened. I mean, I talked with Dr. Camilo Ortiz on a recent Fresh Take, and my husband was like, we rode around in the back of the pickup truck to Dallas. They would literally pile in the back of the pickup truck with their dog and drive on the highway to Dallas. And they were like, we were fine. It's like, okay, you were fine. But like 5 % of the kids got in a fender bender and like kids flew all over the highway.

6:28I mean, that it's not, you weren't fine. And also in unsupervised situations, bad things did happen to kids. Kids were abused by older kids. Kids were abused by adults. Bad things did happen in these situations. And so I don't really like the facile, like it was paradise. But it was also a world where, you know, four year olds could cross the street to play at their friend's house where 11 year olds had paper routes in the like pre morning darkness where they're riding their bikes around the neighborhood by themselves. And I don't know if it was a good idea or not. And I don't think we could go back there if we wanted to.

7:06But it was true. I think we also really worry about the wrong things. And we can't get into that. Like When you hear about a kid getting up at six o 'clock in the morning in the dark to deliver newspapers, you think that the danger is that a stranger is going to pull up in a van, pull them off of the bike and kidnap them. The chance of that happening is infinitesimally small. Like that is actually not a valid concern. No matter how many true crime podcasts you listen to. Which is part of why you're having this problem. Spoiler alert. But the danger is back in the day, they're going to get hit by a bike.

7:42they're not wearing a helmet, they're going to get a head injury. Sure. That's really the danger of what's going to happen. It's really not the dangers that we worry about. And I do think, you know, people worry about the wrong things. Kids have more freedom today. So the study made an interesting point, have more freedom and like what they can wear, you know, what they can take in school, how they can identify themselves, right? Like some things are better. And the study sort of argues like, yeah, that's all true. And the one thing that is less free is the opportunity to engage in activities that involve personal responsibility and risk to some degree without adults overseeing them.

8:21But your risk calculation is also wrong because they're sitting at home with a phone that can access the world's worst information at the touch of their fingers. And so like the unbelievable danger that is outside your door, the call is coming from inside the house. Oldie Lux alert. Back in my day, there are a couple of factors that I thought were like, wow, I never really thought of it this way that have sort of changed since we were all, you know, riding our bikes with the banana seats around the neighborhood until it got dark outside. So here's what they were. The study kind of ticks through them.

8:54The first one was what they called CIM, Children's Independent Mobility. guess what country in the world has more CIM than any other nation in today's world? Yeah, Finland, Finland. Okay, they do everything right. They we I mean, maybe the takeaway is you all move to Finland where the babies sleep outside and the CIM rate of independent mobility is much higher than the United States. Yeah, I mean, we have a friend who moved to Denmark, and she's constantly posting and it's like, right, her kids get home and they're like, Oh, we went out to the ocean today and we were jump grabbing fish out of the pond and it's like i never signed a permission slip like i yeah no it's like oh we just got on our bikes and rode 40 miles to the ocean and just grabbed fish yep i guess they're still doing that in finland at least according to this study yeah they don't have tort laws in finland and that's a big part of this tort laws meaning like we sue people if you get on a if you still you sue the school if they get in a bike accident on the way Yeah, yeah, right.

9:53You slip and fall on the ice outside. Some other things about school. These were some some data that I really thought was fascinating. Since the 1950s to now, I mean, long time, but still over the last 75 years, let's say the length of the school year in the United States has increased by five weeks. It's five weeks long. And I thought I'm like, yeah, I thought so. I thought we were like, out of pretty much done by Memorial Day and did not start before Labor Day. And now I feel like the kids have like 10 minutes off in July. We go like a full month after Memorial Day. And then they come home with four hours of homework.

10:28So like, when is this free play happening? Right. Homework is another factor. Exactly. Homework, when we were in early grades, I had to like, you know, color a worksheet once in a while, like in kindergarten, first grades. I don't think I had any homework in kindergarten. No homework. You shouldn't have. We didn't have homework before fourth grade. Right, right. It didn't exist. Now it exists. Somebody just put in our Facebook group, that her three-year-old was sent home with a like draw these letters worksheet that a three-year-old is like manifestly incapable of doing. Like a three-year-old does not have the fine water skills to do such a thing.

10:59It's preposterous. Not available for us. The creep is real. The length of the school day has also increased over the last couple of generations. Makes sense. Recess time has decreased. Yes. Some kids don't get it. Some kids get 20 minutes of it. Some kids have like indoor recess for you know terrible reasons and so all in all putting all this together our kids you're speaking for you and me our kids are spending about 11 hours a week more on school and homework than you and i did when we went to school 11 hours a week is like i mean a 40-hour work week that's like yeah it's an additional like almost day of the yeah it's half a day yeah yeah it's a full day because you're asleep it's a full day of work yeah yep Those are the school related factors.

11:44Way more school and homework. And I will say I will push back. My mother was a therapist who worked a lot with teens, and she definitely had complaints about schools that weren't supervising enough that kids were dealing with very, very difficult bullying. And so this is probably 30 years ago, like, kids were dealing with incredibly difficult situations at school that they were not equipped for and that there was not enough supervision of the kids, like basically in between classes and in the hallways and that she was always frustrated that kids were kind of like sent to the wolves in certain schools that she worked with.

12:23That there should be a little more supervision. And so it's not facile answers. Like I get that like, oh, there's a recess aid and that means that kids don't have to work it out for themselves. There's also a recess aid that means that like the kid is not getting brutally bullied. Right. Punched in the face or bullied. Yes, yes. And scared to death. And, you know, these answers are not going to be as facile as we would like. You know, and then there's a lot of this, like, just send your kids out to play. But these days, again, over the last generations, it's less backyard play because, like, great idea.

12:55Send your kid out to play. Who are they going to play with? Right. Everybody's at, like, Taekwondo lessons. Right. Everyone else is at Mandarin class. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody's home. Nobody's around. Nobody's outside because it's not safe or they're too busy. And so it's not as easy. So if you want your kid to play with other kids, more and more kids playing with other kids is taking place in, you know, my gym is what is called New York City, like indoor tumble spaces or playgrounds, you know, things which are great, but which involve implicitly adult supervision and sometimes explicit, like now we're going to do this.

13:27Now we're going to do that. Right. Super soccer stars. And it is hard. Like I have a kid who tends to have this group of friends that he loves playing with. And I started at some point, like every other Friday, they would all come to our house. We have kind of a big yard and they can go and we have woods and they can go and play and explore and get crazy. That's Friday nights. And I buy two boxes of pizza and some sodas. And like, that's my contribution to the entire thing. But I did. I mean, the kids get these boys are insane. Like they do the stupidest stuff. At some point they had a yoga mat and they were putting like soda on it and sliding through it.

14:06I mean, they do incredibly stupid stuff. And I did get a sense that when the parents picked up the kids who were like dirty and sticky and like had obviously been like rolling around in soda, that they were like, what the heck? And so I kind of sent an email out and I said, here's the thing. This is what I provide, a backyard. And that's it. I don't watch them. I don't supervise them. And so if you're not comfortable with that, like I get it. I don't really want a kid. I mean, there's woods behind my house where there are logs over pretty deep holes. Like, I don't want a kid ending up in the hospital after playing at my house.

14:41You're not going to stand there. I do think it's important to let them do it. And if I go outside, you know, they're just, the kids are like, I think I said this to Dr. Ortiz, the game is let's hit the baseball. Oh, I have a can of Coke. Let's hit cans of Coke. Now let's pour cans of Coke all over each other. They just make bizarre choices. and yes I would stop them from doing that if I was outside but I'm not if you happen to be looking out the window maybe if you're walking by from the but I kind of obnoxiously don't and so but I see where it's not particularly safe what they're doing well I'm going to tell you that I think you are very much on the right track for reasons we're going to discuss right after this hey there I'm Kendra Adachi and my show, The Lazy Genius Podcast, helps you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't.

15:36And you get to decide what matters. I'm not here to tell you what to do. I'm here to give you a new way to see. Episodes of The Lazy Genius Podcast are full of compassionate time management tips and permission slips to do what makes sense for you. New episodes drop every Monday. Follow and listen to The Lazy Genius Podcast on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Amy, validate all my choices. Tell me why I'm the best. Okay, I'm gonna validate the heck out of you because again, okay, so we know why play went down and we know I won't depress you with the statistics of depression and anxiety among young people.

16:13But here's one cute one. A recent study called Stress in America studied everyone in the United States. Like what kinds of people in the United States are most stressed? Teenagers were the most stressed people in the United States. I do not think that's only because of not playing enough outside. Being a teenager, I read a fascinating study a long time ago, and it was saying it was ranking stressful jobs. And the stressful jobs were shocking. Like you would never have guessed them. But I remember one of the very stressful jobs, like brain surgeon, not stressful. Air traffic control? Maybe not, though, because brain surgeon, not stressful.

16:49Waitress, extremely stressful. Yeah, that makes sense to me. Because your sphere of control is really what makes you stressed out, right? You're stealing my thunder here, but yes. Oh, no, I'm jumping ahead. This is exactly it. Like if you're a brain surgeon and you're good at doing brain surgery, you control how it comes out. If you're a waitress, you're between a customer and a cook and neither one of them are doing what you want and you're just relaying bad information back and forth. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. So there are three reasons that kids in the backyard deciding that they're going to hit a can of Coke and see what happens instead of, you know, instead of you saying these are the rules and this is what we're going to do.

17:27There are three reasons this is good. And the first reason is I'll give you the scientific version of what you were just saying about the waitress. Locus of control. Locus of control is a mental health concept that's discussed at great length in this study. By the way, I'm linking to the study in the show notes. You should definitely take a look at it. There are two locuses of control. One's internal and one's external. When you have internal locus of control, you feel like you have control over your life. You can solve problems that arise. You are in charge. I mean, even a brain surgeon, if you're good at it, it's up to you what happens next.

18:02And if something happens, it's a little bit surprising, you're going to be able to handle it. External locus of control is when things are happening that are beyond your control and how things turn out. I mean, under control of a waitress, maybe an air traffic controller, a kid being bullied. You know, these are external that these are your locus of control is outside. So no matter what your age is, no matter how old you are, what situation you're in, we are more satisfied and have more well-being when we feel that we have an internal locus of control. Like that's everything. So it goes two ways.

18:35Right. So then experiences that give you an internal locus of control actually give you more well-being. Like, oh, I don't know. We're in the woods and you're like, oh, I'm going to make a stick bridge to climb over this, not dangerously deep, but I probably wouldn't want to fall in a cold and dirty hole. And then I build it and then it works. That's going to be very satisfying because it's given you an experience where you had an internal locus of control. And you literally overcame an obstacle. That's one reason. Yes. Well, the second part of that is that risky play, like climbing in trees and stuff, is particularly useful because it helps kids develop internal locus of control.

19:12And that's one that's particularly hard for a lot of parents, I think, to let the kid stand on the slide. This is why you have to let kids play when you're not looking at them. I mean, I literally I have woods, but like I turn around and I find kids like up in the trees. And I'm like, I'm glad I wasn't looking at you do that because it would have made me very nervous. But there you are. Enjoy your locus of control. You can call out the window. Great locus of control. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. You might want to get down now. Yeah. But it's worthwhile. Like they're doing a good thing when they're doing that.

19:42we undercut this so much. I just think about being at the playground and like the moms are like, is that kid okay? It's like three year old climbing a two foot ladder on sand. Like, what are we so worried about here, people? Or going up the slide the wrong way with maybe somebody else coming down, but they both weigh 22 pounds. Like it's okay, right? This is how we do it. Yeah, we smash into each other. It feels good. The other reason that play is important, my play is connected to mental health. Like, It makes sense, but really, yes, it is. So there was a study where six to eight-year-olds were told to draw pictures of what made them happy and then explain what was happening in the picture.

20:19And almost everything they drew was, I'm playing, I'm playing, I'm playing. That's when they had to conceive happiness, they drew themselves playing. Or they drew kids playing. That was happiness. That equaled happiness to kids. Right. Not being yelled at by a coach to run another lap because it was soccer time. Yeah. So then there was another study where kindergartners were shown two sets of pictures. In one set of pictures, kids were saying they were having, let's use your example, they were playing baseball in one picture. They're playing baseball and having fun. And in the other set of pictures, they're playing baseball and they're having fun, but there's a coach standing there or there's an adult watching in the picture.

20:54And the kindergartners only called what was happening in the picture play if the adult wasn't in the picture. I mean, listen up, people. that's incredible isn't that incredible isn't that incredible right if it's just kids in the picture that's playing if there's an adult picture then that became they're learning how to play baseball they're learning they're being taught they're deep deep i like that yeah they're at baseball practice right it's really deep and then there's other studies that have shown that the presence of an adult you know they do like actual studies where like they give kids blocks to play with and they run a version where there's an adult standing there watching them and then they run a version where they don't know they're being observed.

21:36And they play very differently and much more sort of expansively when an adult isn't watching them. Yeah. And I do think that this is a skill that is missing in general. And then it can be hard when you have kids together, and they constantly come to the adult like, well, he did this. I remember watching my sister in law years ago with her two sons fighting over something. I think we're at the beach, like I want to use the pail, he's got the pail. And she just kind of very calmly turned to them and said, we'll figure it out or play something else. And then went back to what she was doing. And I thought, wow, that's kind of extraordinary.

22:11Like, figure it out or play something else. There is no neutral arbiter who's going to come and solve all your problems for you, because you can see where down the road, you know, and people use all these examples, and I think they get a little bit tweet tweet, maybe, but of kids who are calling their moms to talk to their college deans and stuff, but that the idea as kids who cannot solve problems without an adult. Yeah, I mean, I think some of that is like apocryphal, and it's fun to make fun of, you know, the hovering helicopter parent. But there are a lot of older kids and college students, yeah, who are at college right now, pretty unhappy, maybe unable to make decisions.

22:50And a little bit, I mean, let's be really honest, like a little bit delayed launch because of COVID when we were all stuck inside together, right? For sure. And the other thing I want to say about this, because I think that it's not, we haven't talked about it yet, and maybe you have it somewhere, but a lot, we're talking about kids who were kind of born on a pedestal, and that a pedestal feels rickety at a certain point. Like being born on a pedestal, you know, you're safe. Every day at kindergarten is your special day. You know, my kids, I would say, their elementary school is like Wonderland.

23:24I'm like, not every day has a theme and it's always fun. And we have a buddy bench in case anybody feels, you know, not that I'm goofing on the buddy bench. I like the buddy bench. But you know what I mean? Like every conflict is resolved. And I think that part of the mental health crisis is a little bit innate to kids who are born into very favorable circumstances. Because, you know, you think the pedestal is home. And then as you come into your theory of mind and you're a teenager, you're like, oh, my gosh. Like the world is a very difficult place and that hasn't touched me, but it's going to at some point.

24:01It's not just that they haven't played outside enough and that it is hard that kids, there are kids who have not faced a tremendous amount of adversity and they have. My dad talks about this. My mom and dad grew up, they were born before the start of World War II. They grew up as children with like people, you know, in their neighborhoods and going off to war and not coming home, coming home injured, like in difficult situations, rationing, lots of stuff that informed their life. But I also think they were born into a philosophical parenting, which is like, life is hard, suck it up, get over it, and move on, you know, and I feel like we were on the cusp of this, but certainly our kids are born into like, you can be anything.

24:48And like, it's just the expectations of life are very, very different. I think I remember one of my uncles saying, like, we never expected a job to be fun. That was never part or enjoyable. Like that was never part of our story. P.S. I had jobs, right? Like I was babysitting and I had a job after school by the time I was 14. And it was a different time. And that our mothers, it was like, are you going to be a mom, a nurse or a teacher? Those are your only choices. So there were certainly downsides of that. We've talked with people about like, not being allowed to express emotions was hard in different ways.

25:19But I do think this like, open field is very anxiety producing, you know, the idea of like, you can be anything. And by the way, you better be something because everyone's something super impressive, right? As long as it's special, as you were born special, you were told you're special. And like, someday you're going to be 40. And you're not gonna be that special, you know, it's depressing. The buddy bench thing. It occurred to me when you're saying about the buddy bench, It actually is an interesting example because I think it is an example of doing the right thing, which is the buddy bench exists in case anybody's listening doesn't know what we're talking about.