
Decline of play and rise of sensory issues in preschoolers - nether
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/09/01/the-decline-of-play-in-preschoolers-and-the-rise-in-sensory-issues/
======
tsunamifury
I've worked with high level machine intelligence, it has become very obvious
to me that cognitive development goes hand in hand with physical movement and
manipulation. Intelligence, real or artificial, do not fully develop without
prolonged physical interaction with the subjects they proport to understand.

We learn about space, objects, and people by doing regular physical activity.
We learn about things by touching them, throwing them, kicking them into the
woods or on the roof. Our brains develop by manipulating and getting feedback
from our environment.

I feel far less intelligent after a day spent in front of a computer or a book
than I do after a day spent walking in the woods. I'm astonished by how brain-
dead I become without physical activity, and how useless and un-creative it
makes me.

Kids don't need 30 min of recess -- they need an entire day of working and
learning with their hands and feet along with their brains.

~~~
jostylr
I work for a Sudbury School (Arts&Ideas in Baltimore) where this is our
mantra.

I've long take it as an article of faith that humans are wired this way. But I
am astounded by the comment about artificial intelligence. Is there any kind
of paper that explores this? Not even sure how to set it up or quantify such a
thing, but that would be incredible to prove.

~~~
sdg1
There's a somewhat relevant concept in Seymour Papert's book Mindstorms.
Papert talks about "body-syntonicity" where the act of drawing a circle on the
computer screen with LOGO can be seen as bridging children’s sense and
knowledge about their own bodies to something abstract. Young children would
often pretend to be the LOGO turtle, acting out commands on the floor, during
stages of planning a LOGO program, or while debugging LOGO code. It has also
been a strategy for teachers to introduce programming and procedural ways of
thinking. This video shows this in action (with some followup comments from
Papert):
[https://youtu.be/bOf4EMN6-XA?t=254](https://youtu.be/bOf4EMN6-XA?t=254)

~~~
rurounijones
When I was in school with the BBC micro and the LOGO turtle we had an actual
physical turtle hooked up to the machine via a long cable.

Needless to say this was much more popular with us than just the screen. I am
sure it is partly for the robotic'ness of it but we would often walk around
with the turtle as it was moving. So what you are saying and linked to I can
well believe.

~~~
juanuys
This sounds great. Do you have any more information on the mechanical turtle?
(consumer kit, or a side-project by an industrious teacher?)

~~~
rurounijones
This was a consumer kit aimed at schools. Looks like there were many different
types as obitoo has another that I have never seen.

[http://gallery.nen.gov.uk/asset78077_1582-.html](http://gallery.nen.gov.uk/asset78077_1582-.html)

~~~
7Z7
Huh! Ours, and the ones I saw on telly as a nipper, did not look like an
actual turtle! It was just a smooth hemisphere with gubbins on display,
inside.

------
windlep
Sleep deprivation. It explains all the symptoms mentioned in the article.

Kids in kindergarten start early, and stay later than they have in the past
with no nap period. Busy parents (both of whom are now working full-time) are
lucky to get home by 7pm, so the kid(s) are generally kept up till 9/10pm so
the parents can have some time with them.

If parents are going to keep a 5/6-yr old up to 9:30pm or later, then wake
them up at 7:15am to get ready for school at 8:15am.... which goes till 2pm
with no nap time. Well yea, sleep deprivation hurts.

Ask your parents, grandparents, etc when they went to sleep, when kindergarten
began, how long it ran, whether it included a nap/rest-time. Most of us got a
_lot_ more sleep than the kids now.

Edit: I agree kids need more free-play time, but that's separate from their
sleep deprivation.

~~~
fr0styMatt2
This really blows my mind if it's what's happening. Are you saying that
kindergartens are getting rid of 'nap times'?!?!

Why would they do this?!?!

I thought it was obvious that children need sleep in order to learn and grow.

Secondly even if I put on a tinfoil hat I can't see even a financial incentive
for getting rid of naps. That's down time that kindergarten teachers get to
relax in the relative quiet and organize things.

So what possible rationale is there for getting rid of nap time?

~~~
Cthulhu_
I didn't have nap time in school, I had to go to bed at 7 instead (with school
starting at 9). Nap time is only needed if your night time is too short, IMO.

~~~
a-saleh
Similar experience. Both me and my sister were not napping at all and instead
slept 8 pm - 6 am.

------
jostylr
There is a focus in the article in playing outside which is good and fine.

But another important aspect missing today is age mixing. This is crucial
because it is an informal mentoring process, in effect. 4 year olds learn best
from being around 6 year olds who learn best from 8 year olds, etc. up the
chain. There is also reflection from being a mentor to the younger ones. All
of this is absent increasingly today.

It is not just lack of recess or whatever, but a lack of neighborhood, of
community. The young ones learn how to share, how to regulate emotions, etc.,
in part by witnessing the older ones being that way.

~~~
r0h1n
Some schools practice the concept of "mixed age groups" where each class is
composed of 3 different ages in equal proportion. For instance my 5-yo son has
3-yo's and 4-yo's in his class.

Thing is, it's a constant battle for the school with parents who always want
their kids to with same-age kids or older-ones, never smaller ones. Everyone
thinks their kid's development will be "held back" because of the younger
children in the class. Telling them about how older kids also learn from
playing or working with younger kids is a hard sell, when all parents think
today is academic progress.

~~~
hobs
Unfortunately what they do not understand is that teaching someone else is one
of the best learning opportunities you can get, even if you think its not. It
both expands and cements your knowledge of a subject, and highlights the areas
that you are unsure of.

I spent years training various technical topics, and the reason I was so
fluent in them is because I was expected to be able to teach anyone around me
on a dime.

------
dmayle
I'm an American parent of mixed French-American children, and I have a very
hard time believing that schools are the cause of this. American preschools
are way behind French preschools in terms of academic preparation, and yet
French children aren't exhibiting the same kinds of problems.

If it really is a play issue, it's more likely that American parents don't
allow their children more freedom on the playground, instead helicoptering
around (I'm guilty) and not allowing them to just handle things themselves.

~~~
Ensorceled
On a vacation to France last year, my SO and remarked several times on how
different the behaviours of children and adults in the playgrounds in cities
and towns of France differed from their counterparts in Canada and the US.

The interaction in France reminded me much more of my parents and I than the
modern parents of North America.

It's hard to put a finger on exactly what it was but there was a lot more
letting the kids climb on stuff, do "dangerous" things, work out their own
problems, fight their own battles and basically run around having fun.

~~~
smtddr
Today's America has a stronger phobia of getting hurt.... or maybe of getting
sued.

[http://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/may/21/children-
weak...](http://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/may/21/children-weaker-
computers-replace-activity)

[http://www.bustle.com/articles/41370-11-stupidly-
dangerous-t...](http://www.bustle.com/articles/41370-11-stupidly-dangerous-
toys-of-the-90s-our-parents-probably-shouldnt-have-let-us-play-with) \--- I
remember some of these toys and they were great fun.

~~~
hvidgaard
Wow, the only dubious of those choices would be the rocket. The rest of them
are great for learning your body, and act responsible. I really blows me mind
that a trampoline is seen as a dangerous thing - I'd say a pool is worse. The
trampoline is a endless source of fun for children, and I've yet to even hear
of someone getting anything worse than a sprained angle from one.

~~~
DanBC
> anything worse than a sprained ankle

There were eleven trampoline deaths in the US between 1990 and 1995.

[http://www.avon.nhs.uk/phnet/Avonsafe/Trampolines/Trampoline...](http://www.avon.nhs.uk/phnet/Avonsafe/Trampolines/Trampoline%20Injuries.pdf)

There were about 100,000 ER presentations in the US in 2007. These are all
preventable accidents. And these accidents happened after considerable work
had gone into making trampolines safer.

Safety nets help (many injuries happen when people fall off), but here's a
passage describing another method of injury:

> 3.5 If a trampolinist lands on the mat when out of phase with the other
> participants, the mat may be rising to meet them and the effect is of
> meeting a hard surface. All the potential and kinetic energy in the system
> is transferred to the person, who may be unprepared. Depending on the
> child’s mass, the energy transfer may be equivalent to falling from 2.2m or
> 3.4 m equivalent to a fall from a first floor window7. This fact may provide
> a useful tool to communicate the effect of trampolining to parents and
> supervisors.

None of this means that trampolines should be banned. A manufacturing standard
is probably needed for domestic equipment. And people should be encouraged to
have adult spotters and safety nets.

~~~
marcosdumay
> There were eleven trampoline deaths in the US between 1990 and 1995.

Looks like an incredibly safe activity.

How many deaths were there for people simply falling while they walk?

~~~
apetresc
How much time do people spend walking versus trampolining?

------
buyx
As much as the rise in "sensory issues" may be real, it could also be
occupational therapists trying to generate more business for themselves.

It's happened in South Africa's[1] for-profit private healthcare sector, where
wealthy areas with high concentrations of occupational therapists just happen
to have enormous rates of diagnosed sensory issues in normal children, to the
extent that medical schemes (insurers) have had to ration these treatments
(with the tacit approval of parents, who know it's often a scam, but are
forced by schools to undertake OT treatments).

Especially as formerly good South African schools have been forced to cut
back, and the overall quality of education has deteriorated, OTs have become
the "real" teachers in affluent areas, teaching handwriting and other motor
skills, often to every child in some schools. And, anecdotally, bright young
women who want to work with children aspire to become OTs, rather than
teachers nowadays, exacerbating the problem.

Wikipedia has the citations on this issue.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_therapy#Children_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_therapy#Children_and_youth)

If I was an parent of a young child in the U.S., my spidey sense would be very
tingley when I read articles like this.

[1] yes South Africa is a third-world country, but there are aspects that are
very "First World"

~~~
gohrt
Pediatric Occupational Therapists are basically "professionally trained
parents", people who spent a few years studying child develpoment. You can
quibble with the price and the necessity, and in some regions the
practitioners might not be qualified, but in general an hour or whatever per
week with an Occupational Therapist is going to yield insights into a child's
development, and training for parents to be better in their roles.

Modern developed countries have a "no child left behind" attitude. 30 years
ago, a kid who couldn't keep up and fit in would be left to waste away in the
corner (if they were nonviolent) or pent up in an asylum environment (if they
acted out)

~~~
buyx
I don't have a problem with occupational therapists. Indeed, I went for
occupational therapy myself, in the 1980's when it was far less common. I had
genuine problems that needed addressing (when I was 5 I couldn't do buttons or
zips and I couldn't use my hands to save myself when I fell down). This _was_
about 30 years ago, and I was helped, and definitely not left to waste away in
a corner.

South African occupational therapists are certainly skilled and qualified by
world standards.

The problem arises when "no child left behind" becomes "every child has a
problem", especially when there is a clear financial motive for overdiagnosis.

And, in my opinion, the idea that parents need "training to be better in their
roles" from "professionally trained parents" is another step towards breeding
neuroticism in parents.

------
sytelus
Articles like this are not too credible which tries to generalize personal
anecdot and a comment from a friend. Where is the research and citations? I'm
also not sure what is the take away here. Don't send kids to preschools? If
that's the case then there is a fair amount of research that kids who attend
full time preschool have much better chance of academic success and they are
better at social skills[1]. Montessori crowd is even proud to put kids to
school as early as 18 months, 3-6 hours a day and 5 days a week. Is Montessori
method considered play based or more academic focused?

[1]
[http://www.seattle.gov/council/issues/PreschoolforAll/docs/A...](http://www.seattle.gov/council/issues/PreschoolforAll/docs/Attachment%20A%20-%20Key%20Sources%20of%20Info%20for%20Reso%20-%202013%2012%2005%20revised.pdf)

------
BrandonY
A tangentially related story: Seattle's public school teachers are threatening
to strike. One of their demands (in addition to pay and such) is that children
get at least 30 minutes of recess per day for elementary school students.

~~~
brazzledazzle
What a world where teachers have to not just demand something so basic but
have to threaten to strike over it.

~~~
zo1
I wouldn't quite call it "basic". Just look at all the confusing/opposing
anecdotes being exposed in the article and the comment section here.

If anything, without more evidence, we might as well chalk-up the pre-school
teachers' threats to strike as being self-motivated. I.e. Preschoolers getting
more sleep = being calmer = 30mins break for teachers + easier time after nap
time.

~~~
Retra
Still, a 30 minute break isn't something they should have to strike for.

------
netcan
I got an interesting perspective from a young teacher a few years back, I'm
not sure to what extent this is backed by research and science, but she did
quote various studies. Interesting in any case, even as a hypothesis.

Anyway… she thought kids were grossly over-schooled at younger ages. Here
argument was basically:

(1) Kids are hitting diminishing returns on formal schooling at 2-3 hours per
day. Their attention can't stretch much farther and their progress is
ultimately determined by biological limits. A 4th grade reading/math level is
determined more by average cognitive ability at that age than by the hours of
classroom time they have put in.

(2) The second point was a more intuitive one: classroom sizes, particularly
in linear subjects (mostly ready, writing, math in primary school) are way to
big to be effective.

Putting these two together, she wanted 2-3 hours of school with smaller
classes. IE, a teacher teaches 2-3 classes per day with 1/3 the students. She
thought it would be more effective and leave more time for play and other
things.

Fleshing it out in my head, I think it would be something like 4 * 30 minute
classes with short breaks between classes, which makes intuitive sense if
you've interacted with kids 6-11.

The elephant in that room is child care. We live in a monetary world.
Education and child are services that cost money. Taking child care away has
immediate opportunity costs. But, for people that can afford to lose 5 hours a
day of child care, it would be interesting to experiment with this sort of
thing for 6-9 year olds.

There are costs to achieving 2 hours of learning in 6 hours too. Boredom,
frustration, less time for play or sport or whatnot.

------
AndrewUnmuted
Reading this made me sad, but for a different reason than I'd anticipated when
I first started reading. The trigger for me was the realization that our
children are not having the conversations that they ought to be having.

Talking with/to children is important for their mental development, or so I
have been told. I am no expert on this matter, but this is what I have come to
understand. It's rooted on the understanding that social expertise is
developed by means of continual practice; if kids do not play/socialize/work
together at a young age, they risk not sufficiently developing this skill as
they grow.

If we are seeing anti-social behavior from children these days it would seem
that trends in contemporary society have caused a decline in the opportunities
kids have for conversing with others. The lacking development of our auditory
sensory skills means a lacking development in the other sensory categories -
speaking and hearing are the categories we master first as humans.

I don't believe the cause of this is limited to the apparent advances in the
stupidity of early childhood educators, as it is likely that the on-demand
exposure to engaging media content at younger ages and other related trends
are also to blame. After all, if a kid is staring at a screen, they are not
developing their social functions, either.

In general, I believe this damage can be sourced back to the general trends of
the modern household, which has both parents working full-time just to get by
economically. The humans with which the child is most willing to converse are
not available and instead the child is left in a scenario that more resembles
Lord of the Flies.

This is all why I, personally, do not plan to bring children into this world
until I can afford the time to raise them with the love and attention they
deserve. So that the availability of finances has no bearing on their future.
I owe any being I bring into this earth at least that courtesy.

~~~
smtddr
_> >This is all why I, personally, do not plan to bring children into this
world until I can afford the time to raise them with the love and attention
they deserve. So that the availability of finances has no bearing on their
future. I owe any being I bring into this earth at least that courtesy._

Just be careful you don't end up like this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL1-340ODCM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL1-340ODCM)

As someone with 2 kids, while there are definitely clear _" Wrong Times"_
there is no time that completely feels like _" The Right Time"_, there's
always a "More savings", "Just one more promotion", "That one vacation I
didn't take", etc.

~~~
TheGunner
I second this, there's no right time and having children will be a pretty big
shock to the system no matter how much you prepare yourself mentally or
financially. I must say though if you could take day care out of the equation.
Kids really don't cost that much in themselves unless you want to have the
newest fanciest everything and designer clothes ha. If you want children don't
put it off for the perfect time, there won't be one

------
nether
I hope this article is remembered when the next, "I taught my 5-year-old to
code" blog post comes around.

~~~
dchichkov
Probably the key is to provide rich enough environment and be very careful
with repetitive scheduled activities... Teaching a five-year-old to code is
probably Ok, as long as it is a very small part of life of that 5-year-old...

------
danharaj
There are too many people who think it would be catastrophic if children had
any autonomy. It seems like even the most easy-going person can turn into a
despot when it comes to a child. I wish we would treat children with more
respect.

On the other hand, maybe most adults simply reflect onto children the strictly
regimented structure of modern adult life. Better start young, yes? So they
don't know any other way of being a human. It seems, though, no matter how
early you start, a child simply knows when she is being a human being in the
wrong way.

------
coldcode
Kids needs to play, trying to treat a 5 year old as an academic is nuts.
Imagination and creativity don't come from studying, they come from playing.
Thankfully when I was growing up recess was still important even into middle
school.

For that matter I think adults need recess too!

------
mikerichards
My son is only 2, but we decided to get him into "school" last winter.

When my wife was interviewing these places, the choice was between "learning"
environments and "social" environments.

We chose the social environment. There's plenty of time for him to learn
numbers, letters (he's only 2), but it's more important now for him to to
learn to take turns, run around with other kids, bang on the drums and sing
when the weekly musician comes in, etc...

~~~
beedogs
2 seems way, way too young for any sort of school environment.

~~~
ANH
Depends on what you mean by "school" (NB the quotes in the parent comment).
There is a huge variance in options for working parents of a 2-3 year old.
From cramped cinder block day care -- aka The Cacophonous Petri Dish; to
private nanny; to "forest schools" where kids spend as much time as possible
outside digging in the dirt, climbing tree stumps, and learning how to devise
and engage in large projects together (yes, a group of 2.5 year olds is
capable of this).

I don't think the parent comment was talking about toddler MIT.

~~~
germinalphrase
Do you have experience with any particular 'forest schools'?

~~~
ANH
I do. The one I'm familiar with has large garden areas, trees for
climbing/wandering around, uncultivated wilderness areas, etc. It's not a vast
tract of land, but enough that it seems huge to a small person. Indoor time
focuses on exploration of provocations set up by teachers, telling stories,
singing, role-playing, etc.

~~~
germinalphrase
This is interesting. What is it called?

------
ra1n85
Curious too on how this may relate to allergies.

Indoor activities have become so much more engrossing over the last 10-15
years. All that time spent inside in front of a TV/computer/tablet screen
isn't as valuable to a developing immune system as the occasional eating of
dirt or mosquito bite.

~~~
foobarge
I think it does. People raised on farms have less allergies than the rest of
the general population [citation needed but I'm lazy]

Kids need to play outside, in the dirt, interact with live animals and other
kids and be exposed to a lot of different food when they're young and later on
in life as well.

------
peteretep
My wife teaches children in the age of 4-6 at an expensive, well-known, and
high-achieving school, following a British curriculum but not in the UK.

The whole damn syllabus is play-focussed. Teachers aren't allowed to plan
lessons more than a day or two in advance as they're required to follow the
children's interests. Play activities are set up to help the children develop
certain skills, and their development in those is monitored, but again, it's
_all_ play.

This was a difficult adjustment for her coming from a deprived inner-city
school in the UK, but she's now on top of it, and the whole child-led
development thing appears to be pretty well established in academic circles.

------
facepalm
Perhaps sitting still in general is not good, especially not for children.

My son will go to school next year and I almost feel a physical pain myself
when imagine him having to sit still for hours on end. I think I suffered
because of that a lot in school, too.

I also credit not having too many back issues (fingers crossed) to sitting
sloppily in my chair most of the time, rather than in an upright (90°)
position. Tilting backwards with the chair might be more relaxing for the
spine.

I don't have a good solution, though. Perhaps it helps to design the classroom
differently, let kids walk to learn stations and communicate with other kids
and so on.

------
freework
When I click the link it takes me to the page with the article, but then
before I can scroll down, one of those god-forsaken "enter your email address
to get updates!" popup came up which I couldn't close. Usually pressing 'esc'
or clicking the 'x' takes those stupid things away, but this one wouldn't let
me read on unless I give them my email. Thankfully readability to the rescue!

mirror:
[https://www.readability.com/articles/zmba4zju](https://www.readability.com/articles/zmba4zju)

------
graycat
All that time and effort wasted and even doing harm. Extracting defeat from
the jaws of victory.

Pre-school "academic" _what_? I can't think of anything very significant and
non-trivial in _academics_ before, say, the ninth grade. _Academics_ can start
to get severe for some majors by, say, the junior year of college, e.g., a
physics major may want to know differential geometry and exterior algebra. The
real challenge in academics is research, if want to take such a career
direction.

Learn "the days of the week"? Can't remember when I didn't know those. Maybe
Mom or Dad went over them say, several times over a period of two weeks.

The alphabet? There is a little song for that. Reading? Somehow by the second
grade or so, I basically knew how to read. Arithmetic? Learn to add and
subtract single digit numbers and memorize the multiplication table, and then
apply those to the rest of arithmetic.

I have a friend who went to a terrible school, and somewhere in the early
grades got sick and was at home for some days. There his mother was shocked to
discover that he couldn't read. So, in two weeks, she taught him. He was PBK
at Suny and got his Ph.D. in mathematics at Courant.

Here's one: Since we are awash in computers, early on teach _touch typing_ \--
that is, let the kids learn where the a-z keys are.

K-12? Let be mostly play.

------
zelos
I remember looking round a local pre-school and being horrified that they had
the kids all sat down quietly on the carpet while the 'teacher' stood up front
holding up flash cards with shapes on them reading out the names.

------
bloberdoo
the special snowflake parent wanted her special snowflake child to be a little
genius and forgot that all animals need physical activity

might as well run straight into the ocean

------
curiousjorge
it's all these fucking meds American pharmaceuticals love shoving down their
own kids throats.

------
mikerichards
How come that kid doesn't have any shoes on?

