Children at Play: Restoring the Rites and Rhythms of Summer

Playing outdoors is great exercise, but it also allows kids to build motor skills, social skills, and emotional intelligence. (Biba Kayewich)

As was true for so many of my generation, summer in my preteen years was spelled O-U-T-D-O-O-R-S. Unless it was raining, the kids in my neighborhood spent the bulk of their daylight hours outside. We were happy with this exile, and so were our mothers.

Unstructured outdoor play allows children to engage in creativity and imagination. (Biba Kayewich)

We filled those fresh mornings, long afternoons, and soft twilights with games of badminton, roll-the-bat, freeze tag, and hide-and-seek. The boys restaged Civil War battles on grassy lawns, fought with dirt clods in barnyards and fields, or set off to explore the woods like miniature Daniel Boones. The girls played kickball, built fairy castles from stones and moss by the creek down the hill, or cut out paper dolls sitting at the picnic table on the patio. Everybody rode bikes, often with baseball cards attached to the rear wheels for the clicking sound made by the spokes.

No adults supervised these games. Kids talked, listened, and bickered, but we worked out our rules of play by ourselves, free of grownup interference. If summer was synonymous with outdoors, then outdoors was spelled F-R-E-E-D-O-M.

For many young adults in 2024, that era of childhood and adolescence may seem more the product of this oldster’s imagination than reality, some trick of memory tinted by nostalgia.

They would be wrong.

Pocket Portals and Protective Parents

There are good reasons why play in childhood and adolescence has changed dramatically over the past 50 years.

For one, households today have fewer children, which means fewer kids in most neighborhoods. Moreover, the free play activities of 50 years ago have given way to greater adult supervision. Soccer fields in my town, for instance, are jammed with youngsters on a Saturday morning, uniformed teams with coaches and games with referees, but almost never will you see a pickup game of soccer anywhere.

In his new book “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness,” Jonathan Haidt points out two even more significant changes in our culture. First up is the fence of precautions and protections that today’s parents have erected around their children. As Mr. Haidt notes, “children need a great deal of free play to thrive,” yet in the 1990s, adults “increasingly began to assume that if they ever let a child walk outside unsupervised, the child would attract kidnappers and sex offenders.” The evidence for Mr. Haidt’s claim is right in front of us. In many parts of the country, the streets and yards that once functioned as incubators of young imaginations are now empty of children.

Even more dramatic, however, is that cultural earthquake described by Mr. Haidt as “the transition from ‘a play-based childhood’ to a ‘phone-based childhood.’” Over the past 30 years, multitudes of adolescents have become so entranced—some might say addicted—by their screens that outdoor free play is not even a consideration.

To offset these negatives, and to restore some of the rites of childhood, we’ll likely need to devise some new tactics for matching up kids with time spent outdoors and free play. Here are a few ideas that may help dust off those half-forgotten summer rituals and make them a reality again.

Restrict Screen Time

Mr. Haidt recommends several reforms regarding phones, social media, and the internet: no smartphones before high school, no social media before the age of 16, no phones in school. In addition to these restrictions, parents or guardians should limit the hours that children and adolescents spend watching television and movies.

For those looking for suggestions for how to separate the young from their phones, pediatrician Dr. Sarah Scherger’s “6 Tips to Reduce Children’s Screen Time” offers some excellent help. Her last piece of advice is “Go outside.”

Parks and Pools

If you’re friends with the parents of your child’s friends, talk to them about scheduling some regular meetups at a local park or the community swimming pool. Aim for two afternoons a week.

You’re not only getting your children together with friends in the open air; you’re also strengthening your own friendships. Share a picnic or some takeout, enjoy a conversation with another adult, and let your kids indulge in some free-range play.

Pod Camps

Lots of families right now are struggling with the inflation-driven costs of fuel and food and may find the cost of a summer camp beyond their budget.

In the wake of COVID-19 school closures, many parents got together with family and friends and founded pod schools, private enterprises that brought together children for learning and socializing. Some of these schools hired a teacher, while others functioned with involved parents and kid-friendly curriculum.

Parents can employ this same concept for a summer camp. Get together with two or three friends, assign each adult certain areas of responsibility—or hire a teen to help—and put on a backyard camp all your own. Tailor the activities to the children’s ages and interests, schedule lots of time for unsupervised play as well as for field trips, hikes, and trips to the swimming pool, and you’ve got a camp.

Family Time

This one comes with a big-time payoff.

For most people, the pace of life in the summer becomes a walk rather than a sprint. The little ones don’t have to beat feet out the door for a school bus, the leisurely art of grilling replaces the kitchen stove, and the extended daylight hours bestow a sort of languid grandeur on the evenings.

From your child’s infancy, spend time together as a family every day. Take a walk around the neighborhood with the little one in a stroller. As the children grow older, sit down for suppers together, which is much easier done in the summer than in those months when sports and extracurricular activities such as ballet are in full swing. Schedule a family movie night once a week, invite some friends or family members over, and then talk about the movie afterward.

The more you’re with your children, the better you know each other, and the more willing they are to confide in you as teenagers. This family time can also strengthen your marriage.

Mr. Haidt describes “The Anxious Generation” as “a book about how to reclaim human life for human beings in all generations.”

Summer is the perfect time to launch that reclamation project.