058: What are the benefits of outdoor play?

This is the second in our extended series of episodes on children’s play.  We kicked off last week with a look at the benefits of play in general for children, and now we’re going to take a more specific look at the benefits of outdoor play.  Really, if someone could bottle up and sell outdoor play they’d make a killing, because it’s hard to imagine something children can do that benefits them more than this. This episode also tees up our conversation, which will be an interview with Dr. Scott Sampson on his book How To Raise A Wild Child, which gives TONS of practical suggestions for getting outdoors with children.   Other episodes referenced in this show How to scaffold children’s learning to help them succeed Is a Reggio Emilia-inspired preschool right for my child? Understanding the AAP’s new screen time guidelines Raising your child in a digital world   References Anderson, L. W. and Krathwohl, D. R., et al (Eds..) 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When child’s play is too simple; Experts criticize safety-conscious recreation as boring. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2000/07/15/arts/when-child-s-play-too-simple-experts-criticize-safety-conscious-recreation.html Sloan, C. (2013). Transforming multicultural classrooms through creative place-based learning. Multicultural Education 21(1), 26-32. Retreived from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1045830.pdf Ulset, V., Vitaro, F., Brengden, M., Bekkhus, M., & Borge, A.I.H. (2017). Time spent outdoors during preschool: Links with children’s cognitive and behavioral development. Journal of Environmental Psychology 52, 69-70. Waite, S., Rogers, S., & Evans, J. (2013). Freedom, flow, and fairness: Exploring how children develop socially at school through outdoor play. Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning 13(3), 255-276. Waller, T., Arlemalm-Hager, E., Sandseter, E.B.H., Lee-Hammond, L., Lekies, K., & Wyver, S. (2017). 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Owlink Media.   Read Full Transcript Transcript   Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast.  We’re part-way through a series of as-yet undetermined length on play at the moment.  We kicked off with a conversation with Dr. Stuart Brown on the overarching topic of why play is important not only to children, but also to adults.  Today we’re going to talk about outdoor play, and this is such a big topic that we’re going to split it up a bit.  Today we’ll talk about why outdoor play is so critical for children’s development, and then soon we’ll talk with Dr. Scott Sampson about realistic ways that real people can really get their children outside more (and, preferably, get outside more with their children).  Hopefully after that we’ll also look at risky play, and maybe even imaginary play…but let’s take things one at a time. The way we have defined “nature” and “wilderness” has changed a lot over the years.  Park Ranger Jen is going to come out for a few minutes here – perhaps it won’t surprise some of you who have seem pictures of us in my fortnightly newsletter grubbing around in the muck that I used to want to be a ranger for the National Park Service – and preferably at a park in the middle of nowhere.  A lot of days I still do, but you have to be realistic when you marry a guy who works in advertising. European settlers of the New World were familiar with wilderness even before they got here because at that time there was still quite a bit of wilderness on the continent.  The most notable idea they had was that wilderness is something different and alien from man, something that civilization can and should and must struggle against.  Judeo-Christian tradition is filled with this kind of symbolism, and it had an enormous impact on the settlers.  “Good” land is flat and fertile; “good” trees produce shade, or fruit, or preferably both; water is plentiful, the climate is mild, and animals live in harmony with man.  Picture the Garden of Eden – it’s a fecund place where branches are drooping with fruit, there’s no need to be afraid of any animal, and Adam and Even don’t need to do any work to survive – but after they sin in the garden they are driven out into the wilderness.  This view of wilderness in the Judeo-Christian religion is in stark contrast to the way wilderness was viewed in other places; many of India’s early religions, including Jainism, Buddhism, and Hinduism emphasize compassion for all living things because man is a part of nature, not apart from it.  The ancient Chinese sought out wilderness in the hope of more clearly understanding the unity and rhythm that they believed pervaded the universe.  Japan’s first religion, Shinto, was a form of nature worship that actually preferred mountains, forests, and storms over the fruitful, pastoral scenes so important to Westerners.  We grew intermittently softer and less-soft toward wilderness over the years until the 1960s and ‘70s, when the terms “environment” and “ecology” became household words.  For the first time in a long time we started to see ourselves as being a part of nature, although it’s a neater idea in theory than in practice.  We increased the pace of setting aside lands for conservation purposes, signing the Wilderness Act in 1964 which specifically provides for places that are “untrammeled by man.” This makes wilderness areas unlike the national parks which had been created sixty years earlier, because in parks people and nature had always uneasily coexisted, at least – White visitors and nature...