Outdoor Games: Crucial for Overall Child Health

Why Have Outdoor Games for Children?

Outdoor games bring joy and zest in day to day experiences, and children learn from their experiences. After all, what else is cognitive development but the experienced learning! Childhood experiences also determine the personality development.

Outdoor activity

Observe children on playground. They are in such high spirits and so active; all the time running and exploring. The sounds of their laughter and chatter make the atmosphere cheerful. The four walled spaces are too restrictive. On playground, children have the run of the playtime.

Games played outdoor generate tremendous muscular activity:
The blood circulation improves, insulin utilization gets optimized, and heart and lungs’ functions are strengthened.

Consequently, children gain height and develop good muscular structure. Their motor skills and cognitive capabilities refine.

Moreover, outdoor daylight activities delay vision impairment, even in children who are genetically predisposed to myopia.

What could be better than outdoor sports to keep obesity at bay?
Indeed, the studies show that children who regularly play outdoors have lesser chance of developing obesity and diabetes.

It has also been documented that outdoor games even reduce eyes strain: All that with fun during outside playtime!

Gifts of Nature

Nature has its own educational value. Outdoor games widen children’s horizon and bring them close to nature. They run hither and thither exploring the nature and bump into numerous playground experiences, each leaving a lasting imprint on their mind.

Sunshine enriches their vitamin D stores, enhances their immunity and stabilizes their hormones.

Effect on creativity

“Outside the box” is the key element for creativity, though in modern times video games have won the acceptance of being creativity enhancement tools.

Playing outdoors stimulates children’s creative instinct.
Children love to explore. In the process, they imbibe information and learn to respond to situations and ideas appropriately. Their active minds are all the time imbibing new lessons.

Children dearly nurture the joy of knowing. They eagerly implement the newly acquired knowledge in real life situation and study its attributes.

Their ability to internalize, organize and integrate their experiences into coherent stable predictable values and beliefs mature in a playful manner. Together they create imaginary real life situations on playground and live it out successfully.

Overcoming fears and phobias

Curiosity to explore beyond the borders, often takes children to the forbidden territories, and successful retreats helps them overcome their fears and phobias.

The ability to cope with strangers at strange places re-enforces their ability to implement self-regulation and boosts their self-confidence.

They climb and tumble; yet they skip and jump, and learn to deal with flaws. Episodic perfections and failures on playground brings in forgiveness and let go attitude in their dealings.

Our over protective attitude is smothering childhood.
It has locked children in the loneliness of multimedia communication system. The efficient gadgets, exciting sounds, attractive lights and beautiful images can not substitute for human contact and friends.

We need to give our children more freedom. Indoor experiences can never replace the benefits of playing outdoors.

Psycho-social development

It is on the play ground that children find real friends. An hour of playing together develops more sociability than a year of chatting.

Children who play outdoors are able to develop healthy relationships. Outdoor games, in spite of fights and injuries, are remembered only as "all fun". They learn to cope with peer pranks, develop sportsmanship and gain emotional stability.

Personality development

Outdoor games offer opportunity to develop new contacts with people of different age groups. Being able to deal with people successfully boosts children’s self-concept and self-esteem, the important components in personality development.

Active competitive games generate good body image. At home, children often evaluate themselves as physically inadequate in comparison to their parents. This misconception gets rectified by playing outdoor games.

Participating in teams on the playground reassures children of being physically fit and competent.

Language development

Children's mind is fresh and very receptive. Playground gives them the opportunity to communicate uninhibitedly, which helps them to master the language. They also learn to modify its usage depending on various social situations.

Mental well being

Playing outdoor games regularly leads to children's mental well being by -

Increased feeling of freshness
Greater burst of energy
Satisfaction of accomplishment
Peer interaction
Acting as stress buster
Decreasing tension
Resolving confusion
Overcoming aggressive attitude
Relieving boredom, gloom and depression
Diminishing the symptoms in children suffering from ADHD
(attention deficit hyperactive disorder)

Development of compassion, empathy and caring.

In the course of participating in organized group sports, children develop the concept of team work. Consequently, ability to share empathy, affection and responsibilities seeps in naturally in their dealings. Caring judgment and decision making gets sharpened with each stroke hit on the playground.

A child disinterested in outdoor activities calls for attention

Given the opportunity, every child should enjoy outdoor games. If a child is found to be lacking the interest, even when offered variety of sports activities, it would be wise to look into peer and personality related issues.

Outdoor games are essential for childhood development.
Amid nature in sunshine children's physical & mental health are strengthened.