The Importance of Unsupervised Play

Jenny Cunningham: Glasgow based paediatrician

Parents find themselves under intense pressure to limit their children's freedom to roam and play unsupervised. Everyone from child safety organisations to local authorities and the police urge parents to keep children under close scrutiny at all times.

While this may satisfy the agendas of these agencies - whether they wish to inflate risks, regulate society or clear children from public spaces - we should not make the mistake of thinking that this is in the interests of children's development and wellbeing.

Similarly, the efforts of various professionals to intervene in children's relationships in order to minimise conflict, by means of anti-bullying measures, supervised playtimes and 'emotional literacy' lessons, are also misconceived.

It is through unregulated peer interactions, including coping with conflicts, that children develop many of their social skills and begin to acquire self-knowledge, as well as sensitivity to others. The intrusion of adults can only undermine children's self-discovery and their ability to deal with difficulties.

Play and peer relationships

The nature of play and the structure of peer relationships change during the course of childhood and in adolescence, but both serve important functions in children's development at every stage.

Play satisfies children's needs in a number of respects:

1. In early childhood (pre-school and the first few years of primary school) children experience all kinds of desires that cannot be fulfilled. To resolve this tension, children enter an imaginary world in which unrealisable wishes can be satisfied. Through play they can act out their desires by assuming roles and creating imaginary situations.

What is key about pretend play is that it is rule-based play. Children begin to control and guide their own actions in terms of how they think a 'mother /fireman/Super Mario' should behave. Paradoxically, children exert much more self-control in imaginative play than they do in real life - when behaviour is less conscious and more reactive or impulsive.

Through pretend play, children also come to understand more about different social roles and relationships.

2. Interaction with the adult world exposes children to social knowledge they cannot fully grasp. The fears, confusions and conflicts this generates can be played out and readdressed in activities with other children. In fantasy play, children can act out frightening situations and rehearse various practical and emotional responses in games they produce and control.

3. Children can engage in more physically challenging games and more adventurous play when they are beyond the over-anxious supervision of adults. In these situations, children can both extend their motor skills and realise their limitations. They learn to be more independent in making judgements and to look after themselves and others.

Peer relationships are integral to play and research shows that children learn many of their social skills from their peers.

1. Unlike adult-child relationships, peer relationships are based on equality between participants. Children can negotiate the terms of their relations with peers and friends in ways that are not possible with adults. They develop the capacity for friendship and solidarity based on reciprocity and mutual support.

2. Children regularly initiate disputes with their friends. Disputes are often provoked when friends do not live up to children's expectations. Through arguing and debating, children can obtain a better understanding of what they can expect from each other - and this provides them with opportunities to reflect on their own actions and roles as friends.

As well as testing and strengthening friendships, conflict resolution also helps children and young people to develop shared beliefs and values, providing a sense of social identity.

3. Close friendships provide adolescents in particular with the basis for developing greater self-knowledge through the process of mutual reflection. Young people tend to discuss their problems, feelings, fears and doubts with best friends rather than with their parents.

Of course adults have a pivotal role in children's development. Quite apart from the central function of providing formal education, adults create the environment in which children grow up. They set standards and become role models, as well as providing children with encouragement and support.

But it is no less important that they stand back regularly and give children the space and time to get on with their own activities and engage in the peer group interactions that so greatly enhance their social, emotional and cognitive development.