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#Post#: 16502--------------------------------------------------
Play and the mental health of children in your country
By: Susan Date: June 4, 2019, 8:40 am
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I read this article with interest today (although it is one of
those kinds of article that just supports what I already
believed.)
HTML https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/freedom-learn/201001/the-decline-play-and-rise-in-childrens-mental-disorders?fbclid=IwAR0v5_LZKYdVcVEJjz-NyQ-smVLhbvo_En58Cu0b1hsiUCNtImgusy3Opqw
In America the decline in free play of children, with the
increasing supervision and structuring by adults, has been very
obvious. Before this article, I wondered if the increases in
depression and anxiety we see were only changes in the way
mental health professionals define problems. But this study
used data from the same test, with some of the data coming as
early as 1938-- so I guess I am finally convinced that what we
are seeing is real (negative) change.
I am curious if people think this is limited to the U.S., or if
you are seeing the same trends (a decrease in opportunities for
free play, increasing amount of people with external locus of
control, and increasing anxiety and depression) in your
countries?
What have you noticed about the changes in childrenīs lives and
their play around you?
#Post#: 16509--------------------------------------------------
Re: Play and the mental health of children in your country
By: Forest Date: June 4, 2019, 11:14 am
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According to the results of a study conducted by a Korea
Institute, the "happiness index" felt by children and
adolescents in Korea is the lowest among OECD countries. I think
it's related to what you say.Korean children feel stressful from
very young ages, because their parents focus on academic
education and children can't enjoy playing time much. Naturally
it gives children some negative influence on their mental
health. I thought parents would allow kids to play enough in the
Western countries.
#Post#: 16514--------------------------------------------------
Re: Play and the mental health of children in your country
By: MartinSR Date: June 4, 2019, 11:28 am
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The article was very interesting. It's rather my wife's field of
work, not mine... but we sometimes discuss the problems of her
patients (anonymously) an I see it is the truth that applies to
my country too - the amount of depression, suicides,
anxiety-related disorders among young people is enormous. My
wife said recently, that when she started her practice years
ago, her patients were mostly schizophrenics (years after being
diagnosed), a few bipolar and lots of addictions of every kind
(though with predominant alcoholism what was typical to this
part of Europe as I think). Now she has mostly young people with
depression, anxiety, different types of addiction, and many
after suicidal attempts. She is not eligible to treat children,
but since is far too few specialists in children/adolescents
mental disorders, she often gets calls from despaired parents,
like 'My son/daughter will be 18 next month. Will you agree to
meet him? We've tried everywhere...'
Of course I can see the significant change in the way children
spend their free time since my teenage years (1980's), but it's
a bit more complicated here, so I will return to it later. Of
course the truth about children spending more time at school, at
home (in front of the computer rather than with their parents),
and on additional activities organised and supervised by adults,
is universal to all (more or less) developed world. Reading the
first part of the article I fully agreed that the the response
the children get in exchange for their self-developing efforts,
is mostly generated by adults and other children/teenagers, so
it comes from outside. I would even say that in the times of
social media most of the evaluation messages come from people of
their own age. When someone tries to evaluate his own progress,
the others quickly show him how wrong he is.
I would say that more demanding environment, the world turning
round faster and faster, the amount of time the parents have to
spend at work instead of with their children, increasing
importance of being (positively) popular in social media -
everything is more influencing than the decline of play... but
maybe I'm wrong.
So let's go back to how it used to be, and how it is now in my
country. Because of different political system we were a few
decades behind the West, I don't want to say if it was an
advantage or disadvantage as fat as the raising children is
concerned, because the things changed too much since then on
both sides of the former iron curtain. The system actually
claimed the higher value of the society or groups above the
value of single person, and it was supposed to limit the
individualism... but it wasn't the true, and children were
encouraged to achieve goals (for the future prosperity of the
country, of course). We spend at school comparable amounts of
time like nowadays (let's say 6-8 lessons a day, 45 minutes
each. There were less additional activities, and those were
usually organised by school (sometimes by scouting organisations
and religious groups in those countries were being religious
person wasn't strictly prohibited). There was no internet. Only
a few people have a phone at home (if 2 or 3 children in a
class, that's all), the TV has 2 channels which were available
only a few hours per day. So what could we do: read books or go
outside to meet friends. Some children were making groups which
play together, some not. E.g. I was always an introvert and
individualist, so I walked around exploring the world I was
living in. There were no goals we see today - everybody knew
that when you are not interested in being an active member of
The Party, you should rather forget about getting high position
in the company. So 'all animals were equal' (except for the
relatively small number of 'more equal' ones).
The childhood of my son (early 2000's) was different. There were
still children meeting outside, but it slowly changed towards
meetings at someone's home or trips organised by someone's
parents. The members of society started to have different
opportunities, so it wasn't unusual, that a few children had
computers or gaming-console or some other tools that attracted
their colleagues and made them more popular in the group. The
internet existed but high prices of access and hardware, and no
smartphones, made it still not very useful to communicate. On
the other hand the parents being afraid of the changing world
themselves insisted on their children attending all possible
activities they could afford. You never know which one may
appear useful in the future.
After a few years, when my wife said to our teenage son to leave
the computer and go away, because the weather was so nice... he
answered: 'And what I'm supposed to do there?' - 'You can play
with your colleagues' - 'I saw only 2 of them - they sit smoking
cigarettes and drinking beer. Do you really want me to join
them?'
In this place I stopped writing and looked outside the window.
Really nice weather - sunny, 30 degrees Celsius. I saw one boy
riding a bike, and one grandma with a toddler in a sandbox. It's
not a private restricted area with villas where I live... just a
lot of 7-floor blocks of flats for ordinary people from workers
to lower middle-class. Where are all their children?
Why is so many young people not seeing the possibility of
finding their way of life? They see there are no simple recipes.
One can be a university professor and be unable to pay annual
costs of his flat. One can start a business which gives him a
lot of satisfaction, and sudden regulation changes makes it
impossible (or at least too expensive to be widely available).
Some of them can be happy corporation workers - with no private
life, and the boss saying everyday 'You know I can find 10
people willing to get your place?'. As we sometimes say:
'Whatever turn you take, your ass is still behind you'.
#Post#: 16528--------------------------------------------------
Re: Play and the mental health of children in your country
By: Nikola Date: June 4, 2019, 3:17 pm
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"Average happiness increased on weekends, but then plummeted
from late Sunday afternoon through the evening, in anticipation
of the coming school week." That definitely hit home.
About free play and explore, things have definitely changed over
the past decades. I saw my friend from elementary school about
10 years ago. She was telling me about summer camps she'd been
organising and the most curious injuries children get. They're
not used to playing in the nature and just run into trees, don't
look where they're going, they're scared of harmless insects
like flies. Of course some injuries are normal, like if you're
climbing up a tree and fall but these kids don't climb trees
anymore, they hurt themselves by walking into them.
It's interesting what they say about personal control. I wonder
if parents overdo it these days. Kids need to be just left alone
from time to time. Although when I was little, leaving me alone
meant I went and played outside. Nowadays, leaving a child alone
means they'll spend the whole day on their phone, computer or
gaming console. If you tell them to go build a fort... well, I
just remembered this scene:
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrMvGHoW7aw
#Post#: 16531--------------------------------------------------
Re: Play and the mental health of children in your country
By: MartinSR Date: June 4, 2019, 3:48 pm
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My wife returned from work and we discussed the subject, so I
have just a few lines to add:
The problem she sees, when talking to her patients, they say
they didn't experienced the real attention from their parents.
The parents are busy with organizing both time and money for all
the activities, but not talk to their children - about life
principles, their expectations, communication problems. One
young man coming to my wife's practice said - It's the first
time I can talk to someone about it.
In addition to what Nikola said: the emergency units of
hospitals are full of children coming with their parents. The
children are often looking completely normal, happy playing and
having fun running on the hospital corridor. The talk in the
Emergency is often like that:
- What has happened?
- He fell while playing in the garden.
- Has he any injuries, bruises, anything?
- No.
- Does he talk about the pain, cries or something?
- No, but he cried when he fell.
- So why did you come here instead of just observing him?
- We don't know... Something could happen... Maybe you can make
him X-ray, sonography and head CT scan to be sure? We are paying
the taxes, so we deserve!
#Post#: 16540--------------------------------------------------
Re: Play and the mental health of children in your country
By: Alharacas Date: June 5, 2019, 4:18 am
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I'm a bit hesitant about commenting on this thread at all, since
I don't have any children of my own. From what I've seen among
my small students in Spain, yes, they do seem to spend
inordinate amounts of time playing with their smartphones. And
after a while, I just about gave up on asking them about things
they liked to do, because the answer was invariably "shopping".
However, there are a few things I'm not quite clear on. Isn't
the idea that children need time to play a relatively new one?
And isn't it very much a Western middle-class idea? And hasn't
the pressure on children to perform well (or at least to be
"good", i.e. obedient) at school actually gone down rather than
up, with the abolishment of corporal punishment in large parts
of the - Western - world?
I'm not so much thinking of 4-year-olds being sent down the
mines in Victorian England (although there is that), rather than
what I've been told by people born into working class or
farmer's families before, say, 1940. And also, come to think of
it, what I read in an article about students from Turkish
families in Germany and their - on average - often less than
brilliant performance at school: it turned out that many, if not
most, were expected to work in their parents' business or to do
chores around the house after school hours - instead of doing
their homework, of course, play wasn't even mentioned.
And even though the toy industry goes back about half a
millennium, the way toys were played with used to be quite
different, as far as I know. Toys, especially expensive ones
like train sets, elaborate dolls or tin soldier armies, were set
up at Christmas, for the children to admire and play with -
carefully! - during the Christmas holidays. Afterwards, they
were packed up again and stored in the attic for the rest of the
year. Not to mention that most toys were supposed to prepare
children for their future obligations, whether as wives and
mothers, soldiers or tradesmen. I guess the modern equivalent
would be to give a child their own toy-eb*y or toy-website to
manage, wouldn't it?
#Post#: 16541--------------------------------------------------
Re: Play and the mental health of children in your country
By: Chizuko hanji Date: June 5, 2019, 4:28 am
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I sometimes see many elderly play a small sports like a mini
golf or cricket on the public yard and I see a few kids on the
bench, playing with video games on their phone or Nintendo. It's
a typical scene in Japan.
Getting rid of internet devices from children is impossible and
I don't think internet things don't always disturb children. Now
the world is complicated to children. According to UNESCO
research, Japanese children feels lonely the most in the world.
The parents are busy on the work and even if the children feel
pressure in the hard competing educational atmosphere, they
don't have a warm home to feel comfort. Eating dinner alone,
doing lots of homework, and checking how the others are happy on
the internet.
Nowadays treatment through counseling is not only for adult
patients but also children in Japan. If the patient is a child,
no doubt that the parents also have to have counseling too. My
niece is one of those patients of depression. Her parents both
are full time workers and don't get along well. She was isolated
at school too. I guess many Japanese children have the similar
situations. I wonder how many times my niece had the counselling
treatment. It must have been many since when was 12 years old.
Now she is 22 years old and learning in Denmark where you can
experience the best educational environment . I hope that she
will be fine and become a strong person.
#Post#: 16542--------------------------------------------------
Re: Play and the mental health of children in your country
By: Chizuko hanji Date: June 5, 2019, 4:49 am
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Having said that, in Japan, we have many opportunities for
physical play for children. Lots of children practice football
or baseball with the neighborhood coaching. The children play
football and play Nintendo with their teammates. Those children
are always cheerful and have good mental balance.
Some old people are likely to say that recent children don' know
how to use a knife and they lament over that the children can't
sharpen a pencil with a knife. I'm giggling and want to say, "
How many times did I use a pencil this week? Zero. It is better
to learn how to type the keyboard than learning the knife."
Children who are good at computers seem to have good abilities
to solve problems by analyzing the reasons and find solutions. I
think it's because they often have to guess what would happen on
the next scene and have to choose the best tools to go forward
to win on Nintendo. Many children learn something that adults
never come up with by playing video games.
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