For years, mothers have been telling their children to turn off the TV and go do something.
That's excellent advice, as it turns out, especially now that TV is just one of the screens vying for kids' attention. There’s much more to hands-on play than we realize, according to Carla Horwitzof Calvin Hill Day Care Center in New Haven.
"When children are playing in the block corner, they’re actually doing math,"Horwitzsaid. "They’re doing sorting; they’re doing categorizing; they’re working with balance; they’re working with symmetry."
Diane Levin, professor of early childhood education at Wheelock College in Boston, is a leading expert on children’s play. She said the effects of too much screen time can lead to a lack of creativity and problem-solving, starting at a very early age.
Kids "poke the Play Doh and say, what does it do?" she said. "They’re used to having things show them what to do, or when they watch screens and things happen, they don’t have to come up with their own ideas."
Levin advocates for the benefits of unstructured play.
"In the long run, it makes them more self-sufficient," Levin said. "It makes them be better problem-solvers, intellectually, socially, or emotionally. When they do end up having screens to do the kind of tasks where screens can really enhance what they’re doing, they have better skills for using them."
Educators agree the prevalence of technology can complicate the issue, with parents often being the worst role models. Carla Horwitz warns, technology can even create missed opportunities.
"I see parents walking down the street pushing strollers, the parent’s on the phone, and the toddler’s on their own," Horwitz said. "You know, they see the world, but there’s nobody there to mediate, interpret, help them understand it, Because it’s hard to take pleasure in what they’re seeing together, since they’re not seeing the same thing."
Yale University is hosting a talk by Diane Levin called Endangered Play, Endangered Development: Why Play is Even More Important in the 21st Century, May4 at 6:30 pm at the Yale School of Management.
Copyright 2016 Connecticut Public
