Play - particularly outdoor, appears to be vital to children's all-round health and well being

The following letter to the Telegraph on 10th September 2007 supports Going Wild's worries and concerns about the disturbing trend towards less outdoor, unstructured play and more sedentary, addictive indoor often screen based entertainment.



"Let our children play - Since last September, when a group of professionals, academics and writers wrote to the Daily Telegraph expressing concern about the marked deterioration in children's mental health, research evidence supporting this case has continued to mount.



Compelling examples have included Unicef's alarming finding that Britain's children are amongst the unhappiest in the developed world, and the children's charity NCH's report of an explosion in children's clinically diagnosable mental health problems.



We believe that a key factor in this disturbing trend is the marked decline over the last 15 years in children's play. Play - particularly outdoor, unstructured, loosely supervised play - appears to be vital to children's all-round health and well-being.

It develops their physical coordination and control; provides opportunities for the first-hand experiences that underpin their understanding of and engagement with the world; facilitates social development (making and keeping friends, dealing with problems, working collaboratively); and cultivates creativity, imagination and emotional resilience. This includes the growth of self-reliance, independence and personal strategies for dealing with and integrating challenging or traumatic experiences.

Many features of modern life seem to have eroded children's play. They include: increases in traffic that make even residential areas unsafe for children; the ready availability of sedentary, sometimes addictive screen-based entertainment; the aggressive marketing of over-elaborae, commercialised toys (with seem to inhibit rather than stimulate creative play); parental anxiety about "stranger danger", meaning that children are increasingly kept indoors; a test-driven school and pre-school curriculum in which formal learning has substantially taken the place of free, unstructured play; and a more pervasive cultural anxiety which, when uncontined by the policy-making process, rountinely contaminates the space needed for authentic play to flourish.

A year on, the signatories of the original letter to the Telegraph are joined by other concerned colleagues in calling for a wide-ranging and informed public dialogue about the intrinsic nature and value of play in children's healthy development, and how we might ensure its place at the heart of the twenty-first century childhood.


270 eminent signatories."



Accepting there is is need to encourage children outside to participate in more unstructured play, our books Nature's Playground and the soon to be published Go Wild aims offer a solution by offering help in the way of fun activity ideas. We hope they may inspire parents, teachers and carers and make it easier to get the kids out!

Mental health problems in children

On a BBc interview in April 08 Bob Reitemeier, Chief Executive of The Children's Society, discussed preliminary evidence from The Good Childhood Inquiry. "The survey of 8,000 14-16 year olds, showed 27% of young people agreed with the statement "I often feel depressed". In a seperate online vote, conducted by CBBC Newsround for the inquiry, 78% of those who voted said they felt fine, good or really good about their health, however a worrying 22% felt bad or really bad. "

"Concern about children's mental health and well being comes admisdst on-going anxiety about children's health more generally. Two-thirds (66%) of those surveyed in the GfK NOP poll said the increase in indoor activities, such as computer games and television watching, prevents children nowadays from being more active, while 88% areed children need more education about healthy diets. There was an overwehelming consensus among respondents that physical health plays a crucial role in mental health, with 95% agreeing to some extent that physical activities are an important element in promoting mental health."

The public can contribute to The Good Childhood Inquiry by logging on to http://www.hundredsandthousands.org/ and sharing their childhood memories. A summary of the findings can be downloaded from http://www.goodchildhood.org.uk/ The inquiry's final report and recommendations will be published in early 2009.

This research adds great weight to the beliefs of Going Wild. It shows there are so many benefits in going outside away from commputers and TV and living a more active childhood. For the health and well being of our children we should all try and make play outside a higher priority in our everyday lives.