Team-building, leadership, negotiation - these are some of the skills that only play can teach our children, writes Sheila Wayman
STOMP, STOMP, stomp comes the six year old in from the back garden and stomp, stomp, stomp he goes up the stairs to his bedroom. Sounds like he has fallen out with his older brother and a couple of other nine year olds during their two-a-side football game.
Just as I am about to go to see what the problem is, I hear one of the visiting boys come in and go up to him. He has left his playmates to try to persuade the younger boy to come back.
"We were having such fun out there, weren't we?" he reasons with him as he successfully coaxes him back downstairs and into the garden. Crisis over, the game can resume.
It's an example of the skills that children learn and practise during play, particularly when adults don't intervene.
"Physically and mentally, it's push and shove. You learn how far you can push yourself or push others to stay in the game," says Irene Gunning, the chief executive of IPPA, the Early Childhood Organisation. "These are fundamental lessons that stay with you the whole of your life."
The leadership and team-building you see during the TV series The Apprentice is learnt during play, she suggests, and is not something you pick up in the classroom.
Ask any adult what their fondest memories of playing are, and the chances are that they will recall times when they were outside and unsupervised. But many of today's children do not have the opportunity to roam free.
Within one generation, we have started to raise children "in captivity", as Gunning puts it and when they "break out" in the teenage years, they are not good at crossing roads, assessing risks or managing themselves.
A mother of two and journalist with the New York Sun, Lenore Skenazy caused a furore in the US when she wrote about letting her nine-year-old son Izzy travel alone on the New York subway. He had been begging her for a while to let him find his own way home in Manhattan.
So one Sunday, she left him in the handbag section of Bloomingdales department store with a subway map, a travel card, $20 in case of emergencies and some coins to use a public phone if necessary.
"One subway ride, one bus ride and an hour or so later, my son was back, fairly levitating with pride," she wrote in the Daily Telegraph. She did not think this was an extraordinary feat and only wrote a column about it because when she mentioned it to other mothers at school, invariably the reaction was "You did what ?"
Amazed at the media coverage given to Izzy's story, not only coast to coast in the US but internationally too, Skenazy has started a blog called Free Range Kids, under the heading, "Let's give our children the freedom we had."
"Years ago children could play and interweave their activities among everything adults did, playing football and marbles in the street," says Gunning.
"Then cars took over and they're lethal. Children disappeared from the street and we segregated them into play areas, instead of thinking about play areas which all can use."
Mention play areas, and people tend to think of conventional playgrounds with swings, slides, climbing frames and roundabouts.
Since the publication of the National Play Policy (2004-2008), more than €28 million of Government funding has been put into improving the play infrastructure of the State, according to the Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs. This has more than doubled the number of playgrounds in the Republic from fewer than 200 to the current 561, with 116 new playgrounds planned.
The counties with the largest percentage increase in the number of playgrounds are Fingal, Donegal, Longford, Wexford and Sligo Councils. Noticeable at the bottom of the list is Limerick city, currently with just two playgrounds and none planned, and Limerick county with just one but five planned. This compares with, say, Wexford which has 28 playgrounds, and Monaghan which has 21.
When people talk about playgrounds merely in terms of play equipment, they are not thinking about the activity and experience we are trying to create and enable among children, says Hattie Coppard, director of Snug Outdoor in London which won the tender to design the new Chimney Park Playground in Dublin's Docklands.
"What children want is to create their own world, not have one provided for them. We do a lot of work for school playgrounds. We have given children temporary, experimental objects to play with. They made boats and planes with them but that did not mean they wanted us to build boats and planes for them. They wanted objects that they could keep changing."
As a result of experience and research, says Coppard, Snug Outdoor has taken a completely new approach to play equipment, so children can create their own landscapes, mounds and dens.
"They are large-scale, and children have to co-operate to build with them. This has had a dramatic effect on how children behave."
Over the past year, the company has done extensive consultation with community representatives, schools and teenagers in the Docklands about how they would like to use the new Chimney Park, due to be completed by the beginning of next year.
With the designs just being finalised, Coppard promises it "will be like no other playground anywhere".
She was one of the speakers addressing a recent conference in Dublin on outdoor play, organised by the IPPA and Súgradh, a voluntary organisation which promotes children's play.
"The whole nature of play has changed as society has changed," says the chairman of Súgradh, Richard Webb. "Play areas enable children to experience risk in a relatively controlled setting."
Fear of being sued used to be given as a reason local authorities did not provide more playgrounds, but this is a "past issue", according to Webb. Adhering to agreed standards for equipment and maintenance fulfils an authority's "duty of care".
Vandalism is rarely an issue either if a community is consulted and closely involved in establishing a playground, and it is put in the right area.
Webb stresses that local authorities' focus should not be just on playgrounds, but making the whole environment more child friendly, including open spaces and providing safe routes for walking and cycling to school.
The Ombudsman for Children Office says it will shortly launch a "child-friendly city initiative with an award scheme for local authorities who consider the needs of children and young people when planning and developing their areas".
Meanwhile, Drogheda, Galway and Derry have already adopted recommendations that will help them to achieve child-friendly city status.
One of the Republic's two full-time local authority play officers, Anne O'Brien with Dublin City Council, says the people who are designing our environment need to make it safe and interesting for children. Many green spaces are open and boring, she points out, while simply providing a few hills and shrubs will make them interesting for children.
"Kids always want to get away from their parents and create their own world. It is not necessary to be out of sight of parents but to feel like it."
She acknowledges that people are very nervous about anything happening to children. Even parents who know it's not good that their children are chaperoned everywhere, can still find it difficult to let them out alone.
A parents' "play patrol" can be one compromise. A PR consultant and mother of three young children, Carmel Doyle, lives in a cul de sac next to Beaumont hospital in Dublin. There are 17 children living on the road and a core group of eight parents informally take it in turns to stand out while they play in the street.
"The big fear is traffic," she says. "We are visible and a presence in the road."
But they don't interfere with the play. She knows some people passing think it a bit odd that these parents seemingly have nothing to do except stand in the street for hours. But for Doyle and the others involved, it is a time-consuming commitment to their children which, she says, is much more important than staying inside and doing the vacuuming.
Useful websites:
www.playireland.ie
www.ippa.ie
[ www.freerangekids.comOpens in new window ]
National Play Day: promoting free play
National Play Day on Sunday, July 6th, aims to remind parents, politicians and policymakers about the value of play. With events being organised around the State, it also offers practical ways to get children out.
While too much passive entertainment such as TV or computer is obviously a factor in the child obesity crisis, parents may be less aware of how a lack of free play affects personal development.
"We now know the serious consequences of play deprivation which is a feature of modern life, such as aggression and children not able to manage themselves as teenagers," says Irene Gunning of IPPA, the Early Childhood Organisation.
Now in its fourth year, the day will be run by IPPA but it comes at a time of uncertainty for the promotion of play. The contract which the IPPA and Súgradh had since October 1995 to establish and run the National Play Resource Centre ran out last March. It was a one-stop shop for information and advice for local authorities and other professionals.
Tenders were invited at the end of last year for a centre with an expanded role and additional funding, which included work to be carried out under the recently launched Teenspace, the National Recreational Policy. The IPPA and Súgradh applied but were turned down.
The Office of the Minister for Children (OMC) says the process "failed to deliver a successful proposal" and it decided not to award the tender.
A spokeswoman adds: "The OMC is currently examining options to provide the continuing and additional support resource necessary for the successful implementation of Ready, Steady, Play!, the National Play Policy and Teenspace, the National Recreation Policy."
What the IPPA and other play experts fear is that, with the National Play Resource Centre gone, advances made in recent years are all going to fizzle out.
[ www.ippa.ieOpens in new window ]
Coultry Park, Ballymun, Dublin:A playground with a range of equipment and landscaping which scores high for play value due to sand features and opportunities for social play. Designed and built by Ballymun Regeneration Ltd, it is to be taken over by Dublin City Council.
Tymon Park, Tallaght, Co Dublin:Play area includes not only a formal playground, separated into two different age groups (2-6 and 6-12), but also Woodland Adventure Trails for older children. Run by South Dublin County Council, it is unusual in that it uses the natural environment.
Mitchelstown Community Playground, Co Cork:There's a good variety of landscaping and equipment, including a rock-climbing feature, in this playground which was opened last year on a half-acre site donated to the community by Dairygold Co-op.
Portlaoise Leisure Centre Playground, Co Laois:Called Dún Spraoi Fort of Fun, it opened last December at Moneyballytyrell in Portlaoise. There is a wide range of equipment, including a sandpit, water-play unit, spinning basket, tunnel and cable runway.
Ardgillan Park, Balbriggan and Cabinteely Park, Co Dublin:Located in north and south Co Dublin, and run by Fingal County Council and Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council respectively, these stand out because of their size. They are both large parks incorporating playgrounds with a good variety of equipment and landscape which will keep a family occupied for hours and make a trip from afar worthwhile.
The above selection was chosen by play consultant Steve Goode, former director of the National Play Resource Centre