Benefits of Challenging Free Play for Kids

The Overly Protective Parent

If society is going to raise children who have character, grit, tenacity, and the ability to solve problems on their own, it will need to consider some of the excellent points made in Chapters 8 and 9, “Paranoid Parenting,” and “The Decline of Play.” Both chapters reveal important truths that scholars have touched upon elsewhere—particularly, the importance of developing grit and the importance of play (which teaches kids a great deal). Too much coddling causes children to never have to experience adversity—and so they do not know how to address it later in life when they actually face it. Thus, the whole point of being a good point is not to “protect” children from harm, from challenges, or from trials, but rather to give them the experience, confidence, support, and opportunities to rise to challenges, overcome adversity, and dig down deep within themselves to find the grit needed to work through problems.

Paranoid parenting is a problem because it assumes children do not know how to apply themselves, think critically, act responsibly, or use their own ingenuity, grit, and determination to address problems. Paranoid parenting takes the opportunity for kids to prove themselves away from them. This harms children because it does not allow them to grow into their adult selves. As Erikson shows with the psychosocial stages of development, every human being has to resolve some conflict inherent in the various stages of life before moving on to the next stage. Parents who are overly protective actually end up frustrating their children’s progress in development by blocking their chance to face the conflict of maturity. These conflicts can range from facing independence, understanding one’s identity, establishing one’s role, and obtaining a sense of mission or purpose. To develop a sense of one’s self, one’s ability, and one’s independence, one has to actually face challenges. But overprotective parents wrap their children in a gauze that inhibits their interaction with real-world dilemmas—whether that is being on one’s own with only a map and a compass, or working through some difficulty at school, or facing a particularly daunting trial in recreational sports. The point is that threats are not bad in and of themselves if children are given the chance and the support they need to face them.

Parents also tend to try to over-regulate children’s free play. Free play is a way for kids to set their own boundaries, rules, and learn how to interact with others. Parents who want to regulate everything actually make it harder for kids to learn, as they are wont to do in accordance with Vygotsky’s idea of the zone of proximal development. In that idea, Vygotsky posits that children learn from observation, from mimicry, from interaction, and from trying things on their own. If parents are getting in the way of these processes, however, they can stymie the education that comes through play. Parents need to learn to simply get out of the way at times.

Finally, parents should be mindful of the fact that growing up is hard—and that what kids need most is love and support. If they try and fail, they should be encouraged to try again—and perhaps be given some pointers that will help them along the way next time. Thus, it is not a matter of just throwing kids out in the cold and telling them to solve but rather a matter of giving them the tools, training, and positive warmth that will encourage them and motivate them to succeed.