Here Is How Peter Gray's 'free To learn' Helped Me See The Value In Outdoor Play

have been reading this book, Free Play by Peter Gray, and it’s all about how important free play is for children. I realized I have been able to create that environment for Adi and I can see how happy he has been. I am always guilty of pushing him to do more and more and not letting him have enough free time.

Play is how children learn and it’s so important for their development. It’s the time when they can explore, be creative, use their imagination and just be kids. With all the pressure that kids face these days, it’s more important than ever that they have time to just play.

Every page of this book has been eye-opening and I would highly recommend it to any parent. It’s made me realize that I need to give Adi more time to play and just be a kid. We live in a world where we are always rushing and there is so much pressure on kids to perform. But at the end of the day, all they need is some time to play.

They are always either doing school work, or they are on their electronic devices. And while there is nothing wrong with either of those things, they need to balance it out with some good old-fashioned play.

I was able to relate a lot with this book because Adi has been playing independently these days, I picked lines from the book that resonated a lot with the adventure my son has been on.

What Is Play?

Play is a concept that fills our minds with contradictions when we try to think deeply about it. Play is serious, yet not serious; trivial yet profound; imaginative and spontaneous, yet bound by rules and anchored in the real world. It is childish, yet underlies many of the greatest accomplishments of adults. From an evolutionary perspective, play is nature’s way of ensuring that children and other young mammals will learn what they must to survive and do well.

"The drive to play freely is a basic, biological drive"

When my son was attending school he hardly had time to play, So I used to take him out for cycling for 1 hour every day.

Now when I moved back to my hometown and Adi started attending online school he is left with enough time to spend playing outdoors.

Free play is how children learn to make friends, overcome their fears, solve their problems, and generally take control of their own lives"

Adi has been playing a lot with friends around the neighborhood, his playtime is not controlled by teachers or parents. He is free to explore his imagination and come up with new games to play.

The things that children learn through their initiatives, in free play, cannot be taught in other ways. 

A school creates an artificial environment that does not allow children to play and explore.

Adi has been facing a lot of troubles, he has been finding it hard to resolve conflicts, and he has the habit of running to teachers and complaining about every little thing that happens to him, but now we are trying to make him understand that he has the power to resolve things on his own and by doing so he will be more confident.

There is no need for forced lessons, lectures, assignments, tests, grades, segregation by age in classrooms, or any of the other trappings of our standard, compulsory system of schooling.

Adi is under no pressure to sit in a classroom, he has the freedom to learn, his intellect is not measured in grades, and he is not forced to compete with anyone.

Not only has the school day grown longer and less playful, but school has intruded ever more into home and family life.

The school hours are getting longer and the need to sit in one place is only increasing day by day in schools, this is not giving children the opportunity to explore and play.

Also, the school has started intruding into home life, with homework and other activities. This leaves little time for families to spend together and even less time for children to play.

Children are pawns in a competitive game in which the adults around them are trying to squeeze the highest possible scores out of them on standardized tests.

When Adi is free to be judged on scores, he will be able to get a sense of his intellect and potential. However, when he is forced to compete with others, he only gets a sense of how he ranks in comparison to them. This can lead to feelings of inadequacy and insecurity.

If we want to increase children’s opportunities for free outdoor play, we must strengthen neighborhoods in ways that allow parents to perceive them as safe.

When Adi started playing outside independently I was constantly worried about the kind of kids he associates with, and is the neighborhood safe enough for him to spend so much time outside.

But now that I know the people around them and mostly I can watch him it's easier for me to let him play.

Perhaps kids today play on the computer as much as they do partly because that is one place where they can play freely, without adult intervention and direction

I cannot disagree with this at all, I have seen the kind of freedom and independence kids enjoy while gaming, they can take the charge of their character, and make their own decisions without anyone's help. This is something that they do not experience in real life.

The research indicates that young people’s sense of control over their destinies has declined continuously. 

When Adi is not in charge of what he learns and when he wants to learn I see that his interest reduces substantially.

He is not motivated to do things that he is not interested in, this makes the learning process very difficult for him.

In free play children learn to make their own decisions, create and abide by rules, and get along with others as equals, children deliberately dose themselves with moderate amounts of fear as they choose challenging tasks.

I never have to go behind Adi giving him instructions, he can manage his time pretty well.

From playing I have seen him grow more independent, responsible, and confident.

When we try to protect children from all Risks, we take away their opportunity to learn how to cope with adversity and become resilient.

In social play, children learn how to negotiate with others, how to please others, and how to modulate and overcome the anger that can arise from conflicts. Free play is also nature’s means of helping children discover what they love to do.

I have seen Adi interact with other kids, he can share his things and take turns pretty well.

I think this is because he understands that it's not only about him, there are other people too who have wants and needs.

He has also developed a sense of fair play.

They also need safe enough environments in which to play and explore, and they need free access to the tools, ideas, and people (including playmates) that can help them along their own chosen paths.

If parents find opportunities for kids to have free play instead of finding schools where they can be disciplined for 8 hours a day, we would see a rise in more well-rounded and happier kids. Isn't it?

Today most people think of childhood and schooling as indelibly entwined. We identify children by their grades in school. We automatically think of learning as work, which children must be forced to do in special workplaces, and schools, modeled after factories. All this seems completely normal to us because we see it everywhere.

We rarely stop to think about how new and unnatural all this is in the larger context of human evolution and how it emerged from a bleak period in our history that was marked by child labor and beliefs in children’s innate sinfulness. We have forgotten that children are designed by nature to learn through self-directed play and exploration, and so, more and more, we deprive them of freedom to learn, subjecting them instead to the tedious and painfully slow learning methods devised by those who run the schools.

Not that Adi has not been going to a regular brick mortar school, but he is being questioned about his learning by relatives and friends all the time.

People generally judge you by the school that your child goes to and the grades that he gets.

It is difficult for people to understand that learning does not be schooling.

This is the standard as accepted and followed by society I might be ahead of time that's it. 

Peter Gray Summarizes play to have these characteristics

(1) play is self-chosen and self-directed;

(2) play is an activity in which means are more valued than ends;

(3) play has structure or rules that are not dictated by physical necessity but emanate from the minds of the players;

(4) play is imaginative, non-literal, mentally removed in some way from “real” or “serious” life; and (5) play involves an active, alert, but nonstressed frame of mind

Types of Play according to Peter Gray

Physical Play

Language Play

Social Play

Exploratory play

Constructive play

Fantasy Play

The joy of play is the ecstatic feeling of liberty. Play is not always accompanied by smiles and laughter, nor are smiles and laughter always signs of play; but play is always accompanied by a feeling of Yes, this is what I want to do right now. Players not only choose to play or not to play, but they also direct their actions during play. 

Adi has been motivated to play and I notice that he can control his emotions, though all days are not the same. There are days he is upset about what happened in the game but every day he chooses to go out and play.

Play serves the serious purpose of education, but the player is not deliberately educating himself or herself. The player is playing for fun; education is a by-product. 

When children are playing, they are not preparing for the future; they are enjoying the present.

I sometimes worried that Adi might be learning when playing but then I realized that he is learning while playing.

He might not be learning what we want him to learn but he is learning how to socialize, how to share, how to negotiate, how to resolve conflicts, and most importantly how to have fun.

The informal, self-directed way of playing contains valuable lessons that formal, adult-directed games do not. Here are 5 lessons 

To keep the game going, you have to keep everyone happy- This means that you show certain restraints while playing, you might not be able to do what you want but you have to make sure that everyone is happy. This teaches patience and self-control, though it is not easy the drive to play with others is so strong that most eventually do learn it if allowed plenty of opportunities to play. This happens with Adi, he stays away from playing for a couple of days after a fight but then he is back to playing.

Rules are modifiable and player-generated- This means that the game can be changed as per the players and their convenience. The rules are not set in stone, they can be modified. This teaches creativity and out-of-the-box thinking

Conflicts are settled by argument, negotiation, and compromise- This means that when there are conflicts, they are not solved by force but by discussion and negotiation. This teaches people skills and how to argue without being violent

you can play regardless of your level of skill- This means that you can join the game even if you are not good at it. This teaches sportsmanship and how to be a good loser

There is no real difference between your team and the opposing team. 

Playing well and having fun is more important than winning.

Video games are like a real form of play

Kids are more and more monitored and controlled by adults in the real world, and the virtual world has emerged as a place where many of them can still be free. In the game, they make their own decisions and strive to meet the challenges that they have chosen. In the game, age does not matter—skill does. In these ways, video games are like all other forms of true play

The allure of video games, like that of other true forms of play, is that they provide an environment within which we can feel a sense of control over our lives and in which we can explore without real-world consequences. In the game, we can experiment with new identities, try out new ways of interacting with others and learn.

Play is nature’s way of teaching children how to solve their problems, control their impulses, modulate their emotions, see from others’ perspectives, negotiate differences, and get along with others as equals. There is no substitute for play as a means of learning these skills.