It has become an indisputable reality for most parents and teachers that one of the most important lessons kids can learn is how to behave socially. Teachers in the classroom can teach math, language arts, history, and science, among other subjects, but social skills demand more than academic instruction. That’s where school playgrounds enter the conversation. With a little supervision and a lot of play, kids learn valuable social skills they’ll take with them into adulthood. Here’s why:
Unstructured Play Is Critical
Structured play includes team sports, organized games and activities, and any other type of play that involves an adult. These experiences can be helpful in many ways, but they don’t get to the heart of what kids need so badly: creativity, resilience, and organic engagement. Kids without these skills can easily get left behind, bored, and suffer from a fragility that’s hard to repair. This isn’t a call for kids to be left completely to their own devices, but it does highlight the power of giving kids room to figure things out on their own.
Unstructured play happens most often on play structures and swing sets at recess. It allows kids to come together organically and decide on games and activities together. They have to think up a way to include everyone, who should do what, and how to move forward together. Some kids might get left behind, but a little encouragement from adults and lessons on empathy can help the group embrace the stragglers. This can help stronger, more social kids learn to include others and the more vulnerable kids to speak up and engage.
Mixed-Age Play Facilitates Learning
One of the most obvious experiences on the playground is mixed-age play. In schools around the country, kids in different grades are sent out to the schoolyard to play together. A common fear of mixed-age play is that older kids will bully younger kids. And this can happen, of course. But the danger of keeping kids of a single age together is that they never learn to look up to their older schoolmates. And the older kids won’t learn to teach and help younger kids.
On playgrounds with mixed-age play, kids of different abilities and strengths learn to cooperate. This level of empathy is hard to teach in a classroom, but it’s learned quickly in “the wild.” Teachers read books in class about helping each other, teaching others, and looking out for the little guy. Then, kids get the chance to act out those lessons on the playground. Teachers and yard duties can then praise those kids. The cycle will then continue as younger kids repeat that positive cycle.
Communication Opens Up
It’s hard to communicate with your peers when you’re in a classroom where you have to sit quietly and focus. Communication skills are essential to success in adulthood, from college to work and interpersonal relationships. But kids who don’t have enough playtime on the playground may not learn how to speak up, speak out, and tell each other what they need. Those kids then grow into adults who suffer in the same way.
On the playground, kids learn from each other how to discuss what’s happening. They may gossip about each other or complain about class. But they’ll also plan activities, build friendships, and learn to ask each other for what they need. With light adult supervision, kids can get better and better at building those communication skills that will follow them through life.
Kids Naturally Work Together
While the classroom is a great place to teach kids how to work on group projects, this lesson is not always one they take with them. They’ll learn how to work together when they’re instructed to do so, but not organically. This means that later in life, they’ll only know how to collaborate when put into a forced situation and told to. You’ve likely also seen how many kids in class projects end up in a situation where one person does all the work and everyone else kind of founders.
Out in the open, however, kids have to learn to work together. If you’ve got a sand pit, a community garden, large building blocks, or even balls and other gym equipment, kids have to create a team. They cannot have a team or group experience without choosing each other as collaborators for their success. They’ll naturally learn their own and each other’s strengths and learn to build on those. Then, they’ll be less likely to let someone else fail alone or stay quiet when they’re failing themselves. Instead, they’ll look for teammates, for life.
Conflicts Arise and Resolve
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, kids learn to naturally resolve conflict on the playground. In class and at home, there is almost always an adult ensuring there’s minimal conflict. If conflict does arise, the adult will often stop it or resolve it in a way that makes sense to the adult. The kids, in contrast, won’t learn how to accomplish this critical life skill. They’ll figure someone else has to resolve the conflict for them.
In situations of free, unstructured play, kids have to confront their bullies, listen to defenders, and learn to play without too much conflict. The risk of not resolving conflict is too high — getting left out. Kids who don’t learn to play well with others end up alone, so they compromise, negotiate, and settle their differences. Of course there are exceptions, but for the majority of kids, learning to resolve conflict on their own is an invaluable social skill that can really only be learned on the playground or similar setting.
In the end, parents, teachers, and administrators would do well to advocate for more unstructured play in schoolyards and playgrounds. Of course, there should be light supervision to prevent any real danger or to mediate when necessary. But letting kids learn their social skills on the playground is a great way to help them become resilient, creative, highly functioning members of society. You can never have too many of those.