Why You Should Schedule Free Play

Spring sports and activities are just about to overbook kids and parents evenings and weekends. But, you want confident, happy and independent kids, here's why you should have time for free play too.

“Hey, handsome, we gotta cancel some of these,“ I recently called out my husband, sitting in front of my laptop at our Scandinavian-style, light wooden kitchen table, with the glass door to our backyard cracked open, so I could hear the spring rain.

I was looking at our April and May schedules on Google calendar—we had slowly been dropping in repeating calendar invites to our boys’ soccer, golf, and baseball practices and piano lessons. (Yes, I call him “handsome”, an endearment term, especially when we need to do things he would rather skip, like plan family schedules).

When in a country cottage in Finland, pushing for free play was initially as hard as in New York City suburbs. But creativity can blossom anywhere.

Fully Booked

I think it’s fair to assume that we have all read that, based on countless studies, free play is good for kids, and that over-scheduling is bad. But, in America and in many other countries, we still tend choose structured and guided activities over letting or encouraging our kids just play.

When we got back to the US after our nearly 5-month stint in Finland, I was newly determined to not drown us in after-school activities, like we had done the year prior, and instead prioritize free play, for real.

Why?

Because Finland showed me how much happier and balanced family life was if it wasn’t so overbooked.

Because Finland showed me how free play led to my kids being much more self-entertained, responsible, confident, creative, and independent.

And because Finland showed me that if your kids are able to free play, it creates an exponential amount of freedom (not to mention financial savings) for the parents.

(Get this, most Finns don’t even sign their kids up for summer camps—or have other childcare for elementary-age kids—even though kids’ summer vacations are longer than parents’ astronomically long one to two month summer vacations. They simply play independently, which to me, even though I grew up there and did the same, seems unbelievable now.)

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part of the bug zoo.

Fun and Games

In Finland, free play considered so critical for children’s development and for learning life skills that it is prioritized above all else. In schools, for example, kids have a 15-minute “free play” recess for every 45 minutes of classroom learning. With school day being only about 4-5 hours, the after-school clubs mostly encourage the kids to free play outside all afternoon. And parents, who have not hopped on the overbooked-bandwagon, push their kids to just go play outside and play.

Daycare centers in Finland, which cater to for 1-6 year olds as schools start at the age of 7—also because Finns believe kids should play, not study, until then, consist mostly of outdoor and indoor supervised, but otherwise free play.

More bugs.

Play Hard

That said—let’s be honest—free play can be very hard to make happen in the US. Not only because so few other kids will join your kids in free play—because they are always scheduled—but because sometimes kids don’t even want to choose it. They often ask—or go for—screens instead.

These days, and especially with kindergarten and elementary-age kids, free play requires a serious effort. But because the rewards are so great, and because free play leads to much less effort (due to kids’ increased independence), I’m committed to protecting free play time and pushing my kids to get into the ”play zone”. So here’s what I do, now.

If you are a free-play advocate, how do you encourage it in your family and kids?

Different activity toys help get kids going on the backyard. In nature, you got all you need.

Guide to Free Play

1. At least two weekdays after school reserved for free play. To be able to do this, I encourage my boys to choose one sport per season (which often ends up being about 3 times a week). As my boys love sports, this is increasingly hard to do especially in the spring, when they want to do so many. Still, even if we need to skip practice sometimes, we won’t give up on the free play time.

2. Screen time is not free play. I have two rules to avoid my boys choosing screen time over free play on their non-scheduled afternoons: screen time of any kind doesn’t count as free play time and screen time during the week is not an option (though I reserve the right to use if I’m losing it in the mayhem that’s three boys sometimes). When it’s not an option, they will stop asking for it. I keep the iPads stored on a high shelf in a cabinet, so they are also not in sight.

3. Outdoor time first. I encourage, ok, sometimes push them to start with outdoor time: outdoor time always right after school, and then outdoor time as soon as they are done with breakfast on the weekends. They even go outside before school, whenever we have time—as without the ability to walk to school, and no recess until noon, I consider the fresh air and movement critical for the ability to focus.

4. “I can’t wait to see what you come up with,” is my reply to the inevitable whining that often happens. “I have nothing to do…” or “I don’t want to go outside” is what you too will most likely hear. Whenever I withstand the whining, and they get over the fussing phase, their initial boredom leads to their greatest innovations:

   A system to transport a discarded Christmas tree from the backyard to the driveway, a make-up loading cart for gardening dirt, a wooden coat rack built from wood planks they found in the garage—which they even painted multiple colors, a bug zoo. And sometimes it’s just pure rough & tumble.

5. Let them play in peace, is the mantra that I now follow, and which Finnish parents follow to a tee: they don’t hover over, ask questions, interrupt, admire, or participate in any way. They allow the child to stay in the “play zone”.

   Would you try any of the steps 1-5 with your own kids? Do you think making free play happen is hard too? How do you get your kids to free play (vs choosing screens)?

   Play deprivation is actually a thing, and it has studied consequences for emotional and social learning and future success. But perhaps what’s most important, play makes a truly happy kid—and a happy parent. Finland was just selected as the Happiest Country in the World for the sixth consecutive year, and perhaps it’s really because when it comes to raising kids, play always comes first.

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