A few weeks ago a news appeared that saddened me because the headline, which is the same one that I reply in this post, speaks of a very serious fact: children play less and less.
Christmas was celebrated yesterday and hundreds of thousands of children from around the world received hundreds of thousands of gifts, mostly toys, intended to provide children with fun, joy and happiness, and also, although many parents do not believe it, learning and development in abundance.
Toys are the tools of the game. Thanks to them (but not exclusively thanks to them, since you can play without toys), children can play and develop their imagination, their creativity, their intelligence, their psychomotor skills and their sense of belonging to a society, among many other things. . That is, through play, children learn to live and understand the society in which they live as they develop, being happy along the way.
And we parents arrive and we steal hours of play
Reading again the first three paragraphs of this entry, any parent who wants his son to develop correctly, who understands the society in which he lives, who knows the different social norms, who learns different concepts of day to day and also be happy I would try to make the game part of most of your children's day.
However, our limited adult minds are not able to realize that "not much early rises early", which means that not by providing children with more hours of study, more routines and more directed activities (activities with rules and schedules, usually extracurricular ones) they will be smarter and will not grow before.
The devilish rhythm in which we adults live is especially harmful to our bodies, not only physically but also, and above all, psychically. Stress is one of the most important causes of illness of the 21st century, because it causes many physical problems that are not valuable with medical tests (when we somatize transforming into a physical problem a problem that originates in our mind).
And this stress and her cousin sister anxiety, which until now were almost exclusive in adulthood, appear at younger and younger ages.
The games are increasingly sedentary and individual
Returning to the news that I commented upon starting the entry, this is a study conducted by the toy company Famosa, in which about 1,200 families participated.
The study shows, in addition to the fact that children now play less than we adults when we were young, that sedentary and individual games are increasing.
Famosa explained that evidently, after observing the conclusions of the study, they will use the results to design their new toys. This could suggest that, as children play more and more alone and in a more sedentary way, the firm will be dedicated to making toys that encourage children to play with other children and that promote the game to be more physical, providing more movement
However, the logic says that Famosa is a toy company whose goal is not to make children develop better, be less obese or maintain better relationships with their peers, but create toys and sell them. If I were the "Mr. Famosa" and saw in a survey that children tend to play more individually and sedentary, I would create toys that would adapt to that tendency, which would allow children to play even more individually and even more sedentary.
Although they play less, parents already think it is fine
We can also read that although children now have less time to play, most parents think that time is enough. Obviously, it is logical, since it is the same parents who, aiming at various activities, are robbing them of the free play time that children need so much.
As the vignette says you can see here: "the children who do things for children will be adults who will do things for adults", from what follows that Children who do adult things will be adults who do children's things.
A synonym for "child" is "infant", the period of life that infants live is called "childhood" and when parents struggle too hard to control it it becomes called "stolen childhood".
Forbidden not to play
The United Nations General Assembly said in 1959:
Playing is a right of children and adults must ensure compliance in each and every one of the children.
This text was ratified in 1990 in the Spanish Parliament, so it could be said that it is strictly forbidden for children not to play.
Yesterday was December 25, children surely have new toys to play with this Christmas and with which to play, too, the rest of the year.
Let them play and, above all, play with them. If you are concerned about their development and if you want to do your best for your children (as we all parents want), give them the chance to play a lot and give them time to play with you. Even if it looks like a lie, that is the best gift What can you do to them?
