A Cure for Child Anxiety Hiding (and Seeking) in Plain Sight

Don’t just go phone free: Start a Play Club at your school too.

Intro from Lenore Skenazy and Jon Haidt:

Everyone loves before-and-after videos. Our favorite is below:

• Before: Students sitting in the hall,  waiting for school to begin, nearly inert. 

• After: Students playing before school, so darn happy and alive that you, too, may turn some cartwheels. 

Video: What Kevin Stinehart’s South Carolina public school looked like before and after adding a morning Let Grow Play Club.

But is joy enough reason to start something new? Should schools, which have so much on their plate, worry about playtime now, too?

Yes! Absolutely, and right now, this fall. Because as most educators know in their hearts (and from their own childhoods): Play is not time off from learning. It is intense learning. In fact, it’s so intense that we sometimes wish it had another name, since “play” sounds trivial and “education” sounds like its opposite.

But what Lenore has found is that schools that incorporate more play during the school day and/or before or after school reap big benefits in terms of everything teachers and administrators long for: More student engagement. More agency. Fewer discipline problems and more social-emotional…everything. Self control! Focus! Friends!

As you’ll read below, several years ago 4th grade teacher Kevin Stinehart heard about Let Grow (the nonprofit promoting independence and play that we helped co-found). He went back to his South Carolina public school and started a very modest thing: A Let Grow Play Club, after school, to give kids the chance for some old-fashioned free play. It’s screen-free, so the kids get time to socialize face to face. And the adults supervising Play Club don’t interfere unless there’s an emergency. In turn, the Club provides kids with the three things kids need in order to play: A place to meet. A swath of unstructured time. And other kids to play with.

It was simple, straightforward – and so transformative that since then, 13 teachers have volunteered to help Kevin run it. They couldn’t believe the changes they saw in their students.

The fourth “Norm” of The Anxious Generation is giving kids back far more  independence and free play. We wrote about Kevin briefly in chapter 11 of the book. Here’s a much more extensive report from Kevin, describing how he did that, the data he collected, and some of the parents’ reactions. (We don’t know if they also turned cartwheels.) 

— Lenore and Jon

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I’ll Admit It: We Were Stuck

As a public elementary school teacher for more than a decade, I’ve heard over and over again: “Kids these days just aren’t the same as they used to be! They don’t have resilience. They can’t work together. They're fragile! When I was their age, I ______.” 

They are not wrong to be concerned. All of the teachers and parents I’ve spoken to agree that our kids are struggling, but no one (including me) had any idea what to do about it. We felt stuck. It wasn’t until I went to the U.S. Play Coalition’s Conference, which was just up the road from me at Clemson University, that I started to realize there was a straightforward and cheap solution that could make a huge difference right in front of us: we need to give kids far more childhood independence. 

What Happens When Kids Grow Up Without Much Free Play 

Unlike the Baby Boomers, Gen-Xers, and older Millennials who had copious amounts of unstructured free play, the vast majority of “kids these days” just don’t. As the psychologist Peter Gray has noted, “Over the past five decades or more we have seen, in the United States, a continuous and overall huge decline in children’s freedom to play or engage in any activities independent of direct adult monitoring and control. With every decade children have become less free to play, roam, and explore alone or with other children away from adults.” 

This was exactly what I was seeing in my students. Nearly every one of them had no unsupervised play. Instead, they went home to a screen of some kind, and the ones who didn’t went off to extracurricular activities like music lessons, or organized sports, always led by an adult (which, of course, has its benefits). And it wasn’t just the kids in my class. One national report found that “Children ages 10 to 16 now spend, on average, only 12.6 minutes per day in vigorous physical activity. Yet they spend an average of 10.4 waking hours each day relatively motionless.” 

To give a comparison point: Back when I came home from school in 1980s Michigan, all of the neighborhood kids spent the afternoons outside, playing until dinner, or until the streetlights came on. We’d do this all weekend and every summer. We spent as much time in unstructured play as we did in school. And while we thought we were just having fun, it eventually became clear to me that we’d actually been learning life’s most important skills: creativity, problem-solving, coordination, negotiation… You get the idea.

It turns out that much of life’s most important content may be taught in a classroom. But life’s most important skills are acquired naturally through unstructured time with peers. Dr. Stuart Brown, a psychiatrist who has spent decades researching play, has concluded that “The presence or absence of play, particularly in child development, has a great deal to do with competency, resiliency, [and] emotional health…Play is not ‘frivolous.’”  

The Great Play Deficit

As I listened to the variety of speeches at the U.S. Play Coalition’s Conference, I was simultaneously thrilled and maddened. After watching my students struggle without explanation for years, I suddenly realized what was primarily driving these trends. But I still had no idea how to actually turn the tide. How could I help give my students more unsupervised play? 

I felt stuck. And then I heard a talk by Lenore Skenazy, author of Free-Range Kids and co-founder of Let Grow – a nonprofit working to give kids freedom to play and be more independent. 

In her talk, Lenore offered a simple and brilliant solution to my concern: Incorporate unsupervised play into and around the school day. She calls it the Let Grow Play Club. It’s a before- or after-school club dedicated to unstructured, screen-free, free play, open to kids of all ages and abilities, which means that everyone plays together. The school provides Play Club with basic “loose parts” like balls, jump ropes, and boxes. And instead of having an adult organize what kids do, they let the kids figure out what they want to do and who they want to do it with. And what if there’s a spat? Tell the kids you trust them to figure that out, too.

And so, I gave it a shot. 

I started my first Let Grow Play Club once a week, but after a semester of seeing its benefits inside and outside of the classroom, it was clear that we needed more of this. Our school eventually added Play Clubs after school two days a week, and a Play Club before school every day, as well as adding a second recess to our daily schedule.

The Almost Too-Good-to-Be True (But True) Data  

The benefits we were seeing were too big to ignore. Our students were happier, less anxious, and more resilient. We saw them making more friends. And as the quantitative data came in for our schools, we were further convinced of the benefits of unstructured free play. 

In the year before and after adding so much extra play:

• “Physical Acts” ((kicking/hitting/pushing): Dropped from 65 to 32. 

• Bus violation incidents: dropped from 85 to 31. 

• Inappropriate language issues also dropped: 14 to 8. 

• Truancy issues went from 54 to 30.

• Defiant/refusal incidents went from 37 incidents to 18.

• Inappropriate physical contact incidents went down from 13 incidents to 5. 

• Threats went down from 9 incidents to…zero.

In any given school year we used to have around 225 office referrals. Now that we’ve added so much unstructured play though, we only have around 45 a year. Unstructured play addresses the underlying issues that lead to so much misbehavior.

Video: Some scenes from Kevin Stinehart’s Play Club last year. Notice how kids are actively learning life’s most important skills together naturally -- communication, negotiation, creativity, independence, imagination, collaboration, leadership skills, and problem-solving.

This initial behavioral data was exciting, and word started to spread. We received calls from journalists and university researchers – which was a wild experience for a rural, high-poverty public school in South Carolina. One team of researchers from Long Island University decided to run a year-long study on the Play Club participants from our school. The researchers found that students who attended Play Club at our school scored significantly higher compared to children who did not, on both reading and math standardized tests. 

The SEL Lessons Kids Can’t Get in the Classroom 

So, while other schools around the nation were beginning to push SEL (Social-Emotional Learning) lessons through direct instruction in the classroom, our students were learning social and emotional skills more naturally, on a deeper level, the way children have since the dawn of humanity. They did this by interacting with their peers in a multitude of circumstances, through hours and hours of screen-free, non-adult-led play together.

Our students were learning how to collaborate, communicate, and regulate themselves. In the process, many of them became less isolated, less anxious, and more independent. 

I’ve seen both of my daughters change as a result of attending Play Club as well. While I do let them play outside, on any given day there are only one or two kids around to play with. Modern society isn’t like my childhood, when all the kids came out to play. As a result it was primarily at Play Club that my daughters learned crucial life skills that they use all the time now outside of Play Club. My youngest daughter is no longer afraid to talk to new people when we’re out in public (asking a salesclerk a question, or asking the neighbors if their kids can come out and play. She’s even taken to riding her scooter on the sidewalk around the neighborhood and saying “Hi!” to everyone she encounters). Meanwhile, my oldest daughter has learned self-confidence and more independence. She no longer requires us to help keep her entertained and is currently teaching herself guitar. She even ran for student council – a shock to both her mom and me, as she used to be incredibly shy.

What Parents Experienced 

At this point, my school had behavioral data, academic data, and dozens of anecdotal stories of students who made huge gains after being able to play (including my own daughters!) But, I was curious to hear what the parents of other Play Club participants had to say about their children after weeks, months, and for some, years of participating. 

I reached out to the parents at our school's Play Club and asked them “Has the Let Grow Play Club impacted your child in any way, and if so how?” Although I saw the effects on my own kids, I was still struck by what they said. I’ve included every response in the document liked here, but for brevity’s sake, only a few are included below.

From Emily Zagar: 

After a couple of weeks of attending Play Club, I noticed my daughter’s interactions with her older siblings changed. She became more flexible and open to their rules to games. Less bickering! The electronics were put down and play continued at home. They explored our wooded property; discovered we had blackberry bushes! Built forts and created trails. Simultaneously, she became more independent and didn’t require someone to constantly play with her. She was happy to be alone in a hammock with a book or writing stories. 

From Dr. Amanda Plumblee: 

My child has had social anxiety since she was born. If we were not first to daycare, or school, she was inconsolable in the mornings. She always wanted the people to come to her, and not the other way. Play Club changed all of that for her. She gained confidence among her peers, and learned communication skills from Play Club that she was not receiving from classroom instruction. 

From Elizabeth Barbee: 

After my daughter passed away, I watched my younger daughter struggle with confidence and navigating this world without her. Play Club gave her the confidence boost she needed to speak up for herself, make lasting friendships, and try new things. She finally began to smile again. She is thriving now, and I fully believe it’s because of Play Club and the free time to just be a kid with her school friends. 

From Kindel Thomas: 

Our son LOVED Play Club!! He always looked forward to it!! Even now, he takes responsibility and leadership in situations with friends and at home, using skills he learned in Play Club. He’s able to communicate clearly and diffuse tense situations with his brother and younger cousin, and he understands the value of enjoying down-time that isn’t programmed.

Why Play Made Such a Difference

There’s only so much that sitting in a Driver’s Ed class can teach you about driving. The classwork is not irrelevant, but at some point the real lessons are learned on the road, driving a real vehicle.

Similarly, play makes abstract social lessons concrete. Play teaches life’s most important lessons naturally and profoundly. But unlike driving, play allows for mistakes and blunders in a low-stakes setting.

Evolution has given children an intense drive to play for a reason. When adults can get out of their way, with our fears and meddling, unstructured play can give kids exactly what they need to navigate the world successfully and thrive -- just as it always has.

How Parents Can Help Bring a Let Grow Play Club to Their Kids’ School 

For parents looking to add more free play, a great place to start is by connecting with other like-minded parents, teachers, and administrators in your school community. Ask them to briefly reminisce about their unsupervised childhood play experiences. 

Discuss why unstructured, mixed-age play is developmentally crucial for kids’ mental, social, and emotional health. If possible, get an administrator, a teacher, or the PTA / PTO to endorse the idea of a Play Club. I started by sharing the free Let Grow Play Club implementation guide. I also showed Peter Gray’s TEDx talk on play. Point out to teachers and administrators that, unlike other after-school activities, Play Club requires no teacher prep time, and takes no time away from academics.

Note also that most schools don’t need any extra insurance or special consideration, as the club is on school property, just like gym and recess, and it’s supervised (albeit with a very light touch) by an adult.

Play Club has proven transformational for our school. It is so simple yet so powerful. It reverses a societal change that starved kids of something they desperately need: unstructured free play with other kids.