Lack of independent play is creating mental health crisis among kids today -- and overprotective parenting is to blame

[Anonymous]

I do home health work so I am inside people's homes. I see the TV on all day with very little outside time. I also see parents working from home and the under 5 year old kids are expected to entertain themselves for a good part of the day - so limited interactions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We live downtown. My kids cant play outside bc of guns, mentally ill homeless people and drugs, as well as insanely speeding cars, motorcycles and atvs. My older one now takes metro to school across town. It’s a bit of a wasteland for kids. I grew up with a lot of freedom in the 80s in a rural area. I havent over scheduled my kids at all, but it’s still sad. “There are no children here”… and it’s Halloween.

It’s a shame you willingly chose that neighborhood then? Because I also live in the District and experience none of the above.

Congratulations on being rich!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree with this - but I think the problem is both overbearing parents AND parents constantly turning to screen time

Parents are turning to screen time because it’s impossible to do the adult life stuff and be your kids playmate. But you can’t just send them out, even though that’s what’s best for them.

It’s all interrelated

We had no cable tv, and my parents did "adult stuff" while we played by ourselves. My parents never played with us. That's a more recent thing, and I think part of the problem. Parents feel like they *have* to play with their kids. Kids won't find other kids to play with if mommy and daddy play with them all the time, or they have structured activities everyday. It becomes a vicious circle.

Just back off and let your kids figure it out. I'm not saying never play with your kids, but other kids should be their main source of playmates, not the parents or activities.

This is a situation where talking about "parents" as a monolith just doesn't work. And also why a tendency to view the past nostalgically, and the present critically, can lead you astray.

It's true that parents today are more likely to feel like they "have" to play with their kids. But why is that? In my case, it's because I was raised by people who actively disliked their children, and that had a negative impact on me both as a kid and as an adult. So I do feel I have an obligation to spend time with my kids, get to know them, take an interest in what they are interested in. But it's not driven by some vague cultural notion or just being a martyr. Is based on my own experience and a recognition that ignoring your kids and telling them, always, to please leave mommy and daddy alone, might have a negative impact on their psyche. I don't want my kids to have to spend two decades in therapy, as I have, building the scaffolding of a sense of self worth, because I am too busy or disinterested to play with them. So yes, I sometimes force myself to play with my kids even when I'm not really in the mood.

Now, I know that not all parents had my experience as a child. But I also no that I am nowhere near alone in it. My parents were the way they were for a few reasons, and they are common: (1) they were raised by Greatest Generation parents who were also alcoholics with untreated mental illness, including PTSD from the war/depression, and (2) they had kids young and out of obligation, and did not really view not having kids as an option. This is an extremely common combination of factors for people who had kids in the 1970s and 80s, and it often resulted in the kind of parental neglect I experienced, which means that a lot of people parenting today are working to correct that pattern with their own kids.

Yes people are sometimes overzealous, and I think parents could stand to be told, more often, "It's okay to take breaks from your kids, and it's okay to let your kids figure stuff out." But parents aren't playing with their kids or focusing on their kids because they are control freaks or because they are subscribing to some crackpot parenting technique they learned on Tik Tok. Most of the time parents are spending time with their kids in an effort to undo generational trauma. That's actually good! Why don't we talk more about how that's actually good?

whoaw.. you have issues that have nothing to do with your kids. You should've taken care of that before you had kids.

If I tell my kids to go play rather than expect me to play with them all the time that doesn't mean I don't love my kids. I'm sorry about your childhood, but you are projecting.

If you actually read my comment, you'd see I'm explicitly not projecting -- my point is that while not everyone has this background, it's a lot more common than people realize and helps to account for the shift in parenting approaches from one generation to the next.

And thanks, I absolutely did deal with my issues before I had kids and I tell my kids to go play without me all the time. However, I understand that when parents fail to do this, it's generally not because they are crap parents or idiots or something, or even that they are over protective. They are doing it for a reason, and if you understand the reason, you can better understand the problem. But people don't want to understand the problem.

You read my post and thought "whoa, ick, family trauma -- please keep that to yourself." Well guess what, that family trauma of alcoholic grandparents and neglectful parents (all kind of hidden under the table since everyone involved had a home and food and an education) is extremely common in the US. It's a generational pattern that results from large scale events like wars and major immigration waves, as well as smaller scale trends like drinking habits and access to mental healthcare.

You look at me and think "oh, you're a one off, we're talking about something else." But this is exactly what you are talking about. It's just uncomfortable so you'd rather yell at parents about screen time or complain that kids do too many after-school activities. Just blind.

DP but I think this type of excessive navel gazing and dwelling on your childhood “trauma” is a problem in itself. Today’s parents are essentially a generation of narcissists, and that is certainly affecting how we’re raising our kids.

[Anonymous]

It is obvious to me as a parent.

However, every time I try to let my older elementary school kids play independently another parent or older adult in our neighborhood says something negative about it.

Stop the threat of CPS if a parent takes their eyes off their perfectly old enough children and then their mental health will improve.

[Anonymous]

I’m a parent who spends plenty of time with my kids but prioritizes my own social life, marriage as well.

When I hang out with other parents and their kids I often feel as though the parents work for the kids. Even with older kids. I don’t think my grandmother worked for my mom. It’s like the parents are there to serve the kids and entertain them. The parents have lost so much of their identify and everything is built and designed around having kids. I don’t think this is healthy for children.

Recently I was at the playground and there was this mom playing games with the kids. The playing was on another level. It was almost as if she was an employee who had been sent there as an entertainer. Everyone seemed to think it was wonderful and I was probably one of the few who thought, “this is weird.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is obvious to me as a parent.

However, every time I try to let my older elementary school kids play independently another parent or older adult in our neighborhood says something negative about it.

Stop the threat of CPS if a parent takes their eyes off their perfectly old enough children and then their mental health will improve.

I think one of the problems is that children today are almost feral in terms of their behavior. They have a sense of entitlement that just didn’t exist 40 years ago. I’m fine with kids playing independently if they aren’t annoying anyone but if kids are running wild in the neighborhood and they are being annoying with no parents around then yes I have a problem with it.

[Anonymous]

I think parents are just completely wiped at the end of the day.... Especially when both parents work outside of the home. Add on homework and extracurricular activities and there is just not enough mental and physical energy to go around.... Also, growing up my grandparents live next door to us and every relative lived within a 20 minute drive. Whereas today my sisters live over 8 hours away and my parents live seven....DH family lives nowhere near us so we are pretty much on our own as far as that goes.... Which means we miss out on some family events because we have to drive or fly for a day. I would love to not to have to work but with the economy if we want to keep any part of our lifestyle that is a luxury we cannot afford and I know many are in the same boat.... Especially if we want to help pay for college for our children.... My parents had zero money saved for me so I had to take out loans and luckily they are paid back. But there is no way I would ever want my kids to sign up for the cluster it is now. Mine were locked in under 2% whereas I know some kids nowadays have up to 10 %. I think our country as a whole really needs to have a come to Jesus meeting with itself and figure out what we want to prioritize and I would suggest it being our mental health and our future..... Now the rat race many of us are on is not sustainable

[Anonymous]

When I was young, my babysitter literally watched TV while my friends and I played in the yard...... I never went to a daycare center, but nowadays parents expect their children to be entertained 24/7 when they are paying $30 an hour to a daycare center or a babysitter...... I don't know anyone who'd be happy knowing that their children had to entertain themselves for 3 hours.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think parents are just completely wiped at the end of the day.... Especially when both parents work outside of the home. Add on homework and extracurricular activities and there is just not enough mental and physical energy to go around.... Also, growing up my grandparents live next door to us and every relative lived within a 20 minute drive. Whereas today my sisters live over 8 hours away and my parents live seven....DH family lives nowhere near us so we are pretty much on our own as far as that goes.... Which means we miss out on some family events because we have to drive or fly for a day. I would love to not to have to work but with the economy if we want to keep any part of our lifestyle that is a luxury we cannot afford and I know many are in the same boat.... Especially if we want to help pay for college for our children.... My parents had zero money saved for me so I had to take out loans and luckily they are paid back. But there is no way I would ever want my kids to sign up for the cluster it is now. Mine were locked in under 2% whereas I know some kids nowadays have up to 10 %. I think our country as a whole really needs to have a come to Jesus meeting with itself and figure out what we want to prioritize and I would suggest it being our mental health and our future..... Now the rat race many of us are on is not sustainable

Adult business is largely unavoidable but do kids really need to be a busy as they are? Why so many extracurriculars?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Most everyone who is replying here realizes that this would be beneficial for their child yet is coming up with excuses as to why they can't or won't do it. Kinda sad, really.

The first step to making this happen here is to drastically reduce screen time. That isn't easy but it then forces their hand. For our children, they will play some inside but there is only so much of that they will do until they go outside to play. Access to screens just short-circuits this dynamic. Also, we make regular visits to some of the bigger playground parks - there are always kids and they love these trips. Our kids are all under 12 and we've been doing this their whole lives so YMMV.

Do you work?

Yes, I do. Spouse works as well and we also own a small business.

What do you do that you don't have any time to take your kids to a playground or let them play outside?

When do you you have time to take kids to the park if you work? Are you part time?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When I was young, my babysitter literally watched TV while my friends and I played in the yard...... I never went to a daycare center, but nowadays parents expect their children to be entertained 24/7 when they are paying $30 an hour to a daycare center or a babysitter...... I don't know anyone who'd be happy knowing that their children had to entertain themselves for 3 hours.

This. It’s as if adults now exist to entertain children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is obvious to me as a parent.

However, every time I try to let my older elementary school kids play independently another parent or older adult in our neighborhood says something negative about it.

Stop the threat of CPS if a parent takes their eyes off their perfectly old enough children and then their mental health will improve.

I think one of the problems is that children today are almost feral in terms of their behavior. They have a sense of entitlement that just didn’t exist 40 years ago. I’m fine with kids playing independently if they aren’t annoying anyone but if kids are running wild in the neighborhood and they are being annoying with no parents around then yes I have a problem with it.

Or… maybe get a life and stop being annoyed at kids for being kids? You sound like a villain from a Disney movie!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is obvious to most of us 70's kids, OP. We saw the transition from kids to preprogrammed zombies, and the future is bleak.

To be sure, we 70s kids engineered that transition. We are those parents.

Writ large, I mean.

[Anonymous]

My kids are in one sport Each...they have 2 practices a week and then competitions or games..... I don't get to pick the practice schedule or decide soccer games are at 1 and 5 on a Saturday which pretty much ruins the entire day.....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree with this - but I think the problem is both overbearing parents AND parents constantly turning to screen time

Parents are turning to screen time because it’s impossible to do the adult life stuff and be your kids playmate. But you can’t just send them out, even though that’s what’s best for them.

It’s all interrelated

We had no cable tv, and my parents did "adult stuff" while we played by ourselves. My parents never played with us. That's a more recent thing, and I think part of the problem. Parents feel like they *have* to play with their kids. Kids won't find other kids to play with if mommy and daddy play with them all the time, or they have structured activities everyday. It becomes a vicious circle.

Just back off and let your kids figure it out. I'm not saying never play with your kids, but other kids should be their main source of playmates, not the parents or activities.

This is a situation where talking about "parents" as a monolith just doesn't work. And also why a tendency to view the past nostalgically, and the present critically, can lead you astray.

It's true that parents today are more likely to feel like they "have" to play with their kids. But why is that? In my case, it's because I was raised by people who actively disliked their children, and that had a negative impact on me both as a kid and as an adult. So I do feel I have an obligation to spend time with my kids, get to know them, take an interest in what they are interested in. But it's not driven by some vague cultural notion or just being a martyr. Is based on my own experience and a recognition that ignoring your kids and telling them, always, to please leave mommy and daddy alone, might have a negative impact on their psyche. I don't want my kids to have to spend two decades in therapy, as I have, building the scaffolding of a sense of self worth, because I am too busy or disinterested to play with them. So yes, I sometimes force myself to play with my kids even when I'm not really in the mood.

Now, I know that not all parents had my experience as a child. But I also no that I am nowhere near alone in it. My parents were the way they were for a few reasons, and they are common: (1) they were raised by Greatest Generation parents who were also alcoholics with untreated mental illness, including PTSD from the war/depression, and (2) they had kids young and out of obligation, and did not really view not having kids as an option. This is an extremely common combination of factors for people who had kids in the 1970s and 80s, and it often resulted in the kind of parental neglect I experienced, which means that a lot of people parenting today are working to correct that pattern with their own kids.

Yes people are sometimes overzealous, and I think parents could stand to be told, more often, "It's okay to take breaks from your kids, and it's okay to let your kids figure stuff out." But parents aren't playing with their kids or focusing on their kids because they are control freaks or because they are subscribing to some crackpot parenting technique they learned on Tik Tok. Most of the time parents are spending time with their kids in an effort to undo generational trauma. That's actually good! Why don't we talk more about how that's actually good?

whoaw.. you have issues that have nothing to do with your kids. You should've taken care of that before you had kids.

If I tell my kids to go play rather than expect me to play with them all the time that doesn't mean I don't love my kids. I'm sorry about your childhood, but you are projecting.

If you actually read my comment, you'd see I'm explicitly not projecting -- my point is that while not everyone has this background, it's a lot more common than people realize and helps to account for the shift in parenting approaches from one generation to the next.

And thanks, I absolutely did deal with my issues before I had kids and I tell my kids to go play without me all the time. However, I understand that when parents fail to do this, it's generally not because they are crap parents or idiots or something, or even that they are over protective. They are doing it for a reason, and if you understand the reason, you can better understand the problem. But people don't want to understand the problem.

You read my post and thought "whoa, ick, family trauma -- please keep that to yourself." Well guess what, that family trauma of alcoholic grandparents and neglectful parents (all kind of hidden under the table since everyone involved had a home and food and an education) is extremely common in the US. It's a generational pattern that results from large scale events like wars and major immigration waves, as well as smaller scale trends like drinking habits and access to mental healthcare.

You look at me and think "oh, you're a one off, we're talking about something else." But this is exactly what you are talking about. It's just uncomfortable so you'd rather yell at parents about screen time or complain that kids do too many after-school activities. Just blind.

I'm the PP. I grew up as a latchkey kid to immigrant parents. But, that "trauma" doesn't make me think I have to entertain my kids.

There is value in letting kids play by themselves or figure out how to entertain themselves; of letting them find neighborhood kids to play with. There is value in letting them be bored once in a while.

You have gone completely the opposite way of your parents. Neither extreme is good parenting. My parents weren't perfect parents, believe me. But, that doesn't mean I should do everything opposite that they did. My mother once said to me that being a parent must be so much harder today even with modern conveniences because today's parents are expected to cater to their children's every wants and needs and play with them. And she is right. We are doing this to ourselves.