COLUMN: Let kids get the bruised knees, enjoy the wide-eyed curiosity

PAUL HOPKINS

With primary schools now closed until September, the prospect of the long Summer looms and what to do with the children occupies the thoughts of many parents, juggling with work and child minding and the eternal question of what to do to keep them occupied for the next nine weeks, notwithstanding the obligatory two weeks break, if budgets permit, on the Costa or the Wild Atlantic Way.

Many parents will have been running around like those proverbial blue-assed flies trying get a place for little Sonny or Seana in the myriad summer schools and camps that have been an option of the school summer holidays the last decades or so.

All are good and worthy ventures, run well as, indeed, are the Scouts and various other clubs for preteens. While a week or two at these camps can be a good thing, the reality, say the child psychologists and education soothsayers, is that children need a break from the necessary regimented structure that marks the school year, as it does summer clubs.

Their young brains need a break, to refresh and recoup their thoughts and emotions and separate them from all the crammed learning and educational input of the last year. And there is no better way to do this, as any child will tell you, than to just chill out, let it all hang loose for the hazy, crazy days of summer.

Half of the estate I grew up in was for some time still a building site and we kids treated it as one giant playground. We balanced on backs of tethering bricks, we climbed up half-built staircases and ran across landings that abruptly ended. Whatever about the building of resilience or grit, it certainly kept up fit, physically and mentally.

And, yes, we played on the street. The car had been invented but we still played on the street, and, though not quite casting caution to the wind, we would ‘scut’ on the back of lorries, though I’d now make that a no-no.

In the morning we were practically shoved out the door, and told “go play”. The world was our oyster, imagination our playground, and such imagination, without the appendages of smart gadgets, was palpable with possibility.

Such wild abandoning to one’s imagination and an endless possibility is these days what the educationalists term “freely chosen play”, when a child decides and controls their play following their own instincts, imagination and interests. 

They play without being overseen by adults, and there’s no right or wrong way to play. Such freely chosen activity improves their health, well-being and development, and life skills.
With measurable activities, like after school sport or summer camps, it is easy to see what has been learned or achieved. Free unstructured play is not measurable. It may be hard to say what a child has actually been doing other than ‘playing’. But it’s that great sense of free spirit, of ‘doing nothing’ for a young, inquiring mind that, I believe, directs one’s development and individuality. I saw it with my own three children. (And, when they and their peers were grown and gone, the silence on the green was deafening).

Sadly, today there is the ‘fear culture’ – fear of injury, and of abduction, a fear grounded in the health and safety conscious world we now live in. “A climbing frame can be assessed, a tree cannot,” as the fellow said. Here, common sense should prevail.

Abduction, though pretty much non-existent in our domain, is still a parent’s worst nightmare. The story of Ana Kriegel will stay with many of us for ever.
For juggling parents life may be so much easier when the children are on a screen, whether they are watching television, or playing on a tablet. But many children are now addicted to these games. And, however much such apps will tell you how educational their product is, moderate use should be the marker.

We parents need to look at ourselves here. Do we really need to compare our child to the next? Is it fair to ‘create’ a child’s world with a list of tick-boxes? Is a ballet class or football worth more than climbing trees and exploring nature?

The latter help develop inquisitiveness and creativity, traits that still stand me all these years later. Traits not learned in the classroom but rather in the school of bruised knees and wide-eyed curiosity...

Don't miss Paul Hopkins' column every Tuesday in the Meath Chronicle