Let Them Play: Why Kids Need Freedom to Build Resilience
When I was growing up, one of the rules of childhood was remarkably simple: come home when the streetlights come on. Somewhere between breakfast and those lights flickering to life, kids figured out what to do. We found people. Invented games. Changed the rules halfway through. Argued about whether somebody was actually out. Got bored and started something new. Childhood today can look very different. In our genuine effort to keep children safe, we can schedule, supervise, organize, and improve so much of their lives that we accidentally remove the very experiences through which they learn to handle life.
That was the concern behind a Utah resolution discussed on the Celebrate Kids Podcast encouraging more childhood independence and free play. The proposal specifically connected constant supervision with reduced opportunities to develop qualities such as resourcefulness and perseverance. I think those qualities deserve our attention because neither can be handed to children in a lecture. They have to be practiced.
Resourcefulness Begins When We Do Not Give the Answer
One of the most powerful responses a parent can give to “What should I do?” is sometimes, “I don’t know. I’m interested to see what you come up with.” That can feel almost irresponsible when we know the answer. Parents are efficient. We know where the tape is, how the fort should stand, what game would work, and why the plan our child just suggested is probably going to collapse in seven minutes. But efficiency is not always the goal. If we solve every problem, children learn to bring every problem to us.
Resourcefulness requires a gap between the problem and the solution. The child has to look around. Try something. Fail. Adjust. Borrow an idea. Find another material. Ask a sibling. Start over. “I’m bored” can become an invitation to discover an interest rather than an emergency adults must immediately solve. There are certainly days when a parent has had enough and says, “Fine, here are three things you can do.” I understand those days. But children also need enough unscripted time to discover that they can generate something without an adult providing the next step.
Play With Them, Then Let Them Play Without You
None of this means parents should stop playing with their children. In fact, Dr. Kathy made the opposite point. Children feel tremendously valued when a parent initiates play. There is a difference between a child continually asking, “Dad, will you play catch?” and hearing Dad say first, “Want to go outside and throw the ball?” One tells the child that the parent is willing. The other tells the child, “I enjoy you. I want to enter your world.”
Play also gives parents extraordinary access to their children. We discover how competitive they are, what frustrates them, whether they bend rules, how they lose, how they encourage, what captures their imagination, and what makes them laugh. We can model humility when we lose and resilience when something goes wrong. We can teach other centeredness without announcing that today’s bored game is actually a character development seminar. Play is relational formation disguised as fun.
But if we are always involved, children never discover what they can create without us. Parenting requires both invitation and withdrawal. Sometimes I enter the game. Sometimes I say, “Go figure something out.” Both communicate love when the child has enough security to understand the difference.
Independent Play Requires Parents to Tolerate Imperfection
One reason adults overmanage play is that they perceive children as inefficient. Their Lego project uses every block in the house. Their fort requires every blanket we own. If we want independent children, we have to tolerate some evidence that children actually live in our homes.
I love Dr. Kathy’s idea that when children live in a home, there should be evidence of their presence. That does not mean chaos has to become a decorating style. Kids should clean up and learn stewardship. But a half finished puzzle, a stack of blocks, a sippy cup, or an art project in progress can communicate something important: this home is also yours. You are allowed to create here.
Play is particularly valuable because perfection is unnecessary. A child building something can change it. A pretend game can restart. A drawing can look ridiculous and still be fun. That freedom matters in a culture where children increasingly feel pressure to perform and get answers right. Play gives them one of the few remaining spaces where they can experiment without wondering whether the result belongs on a transcript, scoreboard, or social feed.
Being Alone Is a Skill
Independent play also teaches children something we often confuse with loneliness: how to be alone. Those are not the same. A child who can spend time alone with thoughts and creativity possesses a valuable capacity. They do not need constant stimulation from a device or constant affirmation from another person just to feel okay.
Different children will have different capacities for solitude. A deeply self smart child may genuinely need more time alone to recharge, think, imagine, and process. A people smart child may need much less. Our job is not to make every child equally social. It is to know them well enough to distinguish healthy solitude from unhealthy isolation.
The distinction becomes even more important when technology enters the picture. A child alone with a device may not actually be alone at all. They may be gaming with strangers, scrolling through social media, comparing themselves, or consuming a constant stream of other people’s thoughts. Healthy solitude gives children access to their own mind. Draw. Build. Journal. Cook. Garden. Read. Work on a puzzle. Throw a ball against a wall. Make something nobody else will ever see. Those experiences help children discover interests that algorithms did not choose for them.
Independence Does Not Mean Abandonment
The goal is not to produce children who never need anyone. Healthy independence grows inside healthy dependence. Children should know when to come to Dad, Mom, a teacher, a pastor, an older sibling, or another trustworthy adult. Community matters. Asking for help is not failure. But children also need the confidence that they do not need rescue in every moment of uncertainty.
That is where resilience begins. Perseverance is effort over time when something becomes difficult. A child cannot develop that muscle if an adult removes every difficulty at the first sign of frustration. Sometimes the loving thing is not fixing the tower. Sometimes it is sitting nearby while the child figures out why it keeps falling.
What Do We Want Them to Remember?
Dr. Kathy suggested parents think back to their own childhood. That can be uncomfortable, but it is useful. What do you remember? Maybe it is roaming the neighborhood, riding bikes, inventing games, exploring somewhere you probably would not let your own children go today, or simply having hours that no adult had organized. Those memories often carry a surprising amount of warmth.
If you did not have that freedom, the reflection may create grief instead. Perhaps childhood felt tightly controlled or dominated by achievement. Either way, the question becomes useful: What do we want our children to remember twenty years from now? Not every generation can recreate the neighborhood life of decades past. Some places genuinely are not safe for children to roam freely. But almost every family can create more room for children to exercise agency within appropriate boundaries.
A Biblical Picture of Hope Includes Children Playing
Zechariah 8 offers one of my favorite pictures of restoration. Jerusalem had endured devastation, and God gives His people a picture of renewal: elderly men and women once again sitting peacefully in the streets, and “the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets.” That image is striking. God could have pictured restoration through military strength, economic success, or impressive buildings. Instead, one sign that life has become good again is children playing.
Children playing freely communicate something about the world around them. There is enough peace for imagination. Enough safety for exploration. Enough community for parents to release their grip. The children themselves probably do not understand the theological significance of what they are doing. They are just playing. Yet their freedom reveals that something around them is healthy.
Maybe seeing our children play can give parents hope too. Watch them negotiate a rule without you. Watch them get frustrated and try again. Those ordinary moments can remind us that our children are becoming capable people. The small independence we allow at eight may become courage at eighteen and resilience at twenty eight.
So play with your children. Ask them first sometimes. Enter their world and let them know that what matters to them matters to you. Then learn the equally important discipline of stepping back. Let them become bored. Let the blocks fall. Let the game change. Let there be some mess. Give them appropriate freedom, and pay attention to what emerges. Childhood should contain protection, but it also needs enough open space for children to discover that God has already given them minds, bodies, imaginations, gifts, and the capacity to figure some things out.
Engaging Independent Play Through the 8 Great Smarts
Word Smart: Leave books, writing materials, storytelling prompts, comics, or word games available without turning them into assignments. Encourage children to invent stories or keep a journal.
Logic Smart: Give them puzzles, building challenges, strategy games, or everyday problems without immediately explaining the solution.
Picture Smart: Make art supplies, blocks, photography, drawing, maps, and design materials accessible. Let the result be theirs rather than correcting it toward your picture.
Music Smart: Give children opportunities to sing, experiment with instruments, create rhythms, or make playlists and explore music without requiring formal performance.
Body Smart: Create safe spaces for biking, climbing, throwing, dancing, running, building, and physical experimentation. Allow reasonable risk so children can learn what their bodies can do.
Nature Smart: Send them outside. Let them dig, collect, observe, garden, explore, build with sticks, notice insects, or simply sit somewhere and pay attention.
People Smart: Encourage neighborhood games, sibling play, board games, and opportunities for children to negotiate their own rules and solve smaller conflicts before adults intervene.
Self Smart: Protect genuine alone time. Offer non-digital activities children can do privately and allow reflective kids to recharge without interpreting every quiet moment as loneliness.
Remember: However your child is smart, remember that play is not wasted time between important activities. Play is one of the places where children practice becoming the people we are eventually going to ask them to be.