Childhood is considered to be the most memorable period of a person’s life. If I look back at my early years, I can still feel the excitement and joy of all the fascinating experiences of my childhood. Earliest play experiences of dangling from the monkey bars, tree climbing, sand play, hopscotch, hide and seek, catching butterflies, cycling, or just sitting around and chatting with friends in the playground are my most cherished childhood memories. Unfortunately in the current societal framework outdoor play is fast becoming extinct. Real play is being replaced by virtual play and children spend less time playing outdoors and more hours in front of television at home.

For me ‘play’ represents all those activities in which children participate freely and voluntarily, they plan and organize them using their own imagination, fantasy and skills and they get immense pleasure from it. Hence play is a meaningful experience rather than an aimless activity. I will attempt to highlight through this article the many benefits real outdoor play has to offer for a child’s healthy development.

Before discussing the benefits, however, it is important to understand the factors contributing to reduced spontaneous, outdoor play. I interviewed several parents vis-à-vis the daily routines of their children and concluded the following causes:

• Flawed Assumptions about Learning:
  The notion of innate and free learning experiences- has been replaced by conditions and outcome based formal activities. Play that was considered as the expected tool to help children learn naturally is now being considered as a distraction from ‘actual learning’.
• High Academic and Achievement Pressure:
  Adult expectations from children are so demanding that it leaves children with little freedom to do what interests them, or what is fundamentally essential for them. In order to prepare children for academic success adults unintentionally sacrifice child’s freedom to experience free play.
• Lack of Parental Time to Accompany Children for Outdoor Play:
  Lives of children today are much more structured, controlled and supervised, with very few opportunities for free play. With increased safety issues in the society, limited play spaces, and decrease in time available to parents in their fast paced routines, children’s outdoor play tends to suffer.
• Societal Insensitivity towards Child Nurturing:
  Increasingly very limited thoughts and efforts are invested in creating places for children where they can be with nature and play freely. Moreover with fast growing population and pressures of urban lifestyle, living is overburdened and stressful thereby having negative effects on children’s spontaneous outdoor play and consequently, their health.
  

It has now been unequivocally established that children can benefit from play that is outside the home, in an unstructured environment, is loosely supervised and follows no real agenda apart from letting children get some amount of physical exercise and meeting children from their age group. The benefits are not just confined to physical development only; in fact they are far more outreaching in terms of cognitive development. Following are few of the many benefits of reclaiming outdoor play and why it is essential for a healthy development for children:

Essential for cognitive development
All children are born with a treasure of innate potential. This innate potential is the prerequisite for learning, curiosity, creativity, thinking, observation, imagination, relationship building etc. The more opportunities children get to use their instincts in a natural and non-restrictive environment, the more they develop their creative, imaginative and thinking capabilities and social relationships with others. In this context, free play and especially outdoor play provides excellent opportunities for children to nurture their talent in a natural way. Limitations and restrictions on play reduce the chances of nurturing innate potential. Various research studies have highlighted that regular physical activity contributes in generating new brain cells, enhances cognitive processes, increases attention span and catalyzes the overall cognitive processes.

A natural way to develop physical skills
The outdoors provide children with the space to move freely that supports the body in developing fundamental motor skills. Experiences such as walking, running, climbing, jumping, swinging, carrying blocks, carts, etc. strengthen gross muscles. Manipulative skills, on the other hand, are sharpened through games like filling and emptying sand and water containers and gardening, etc. Moreover, fine motor skills get more polished while squashing and squeezing sand or clay. Experiences like these and many more make children’s bodies active and adaptable to outside weather and also enable them to develop strong mind and body coordination.