Seeing the children playing this afternoon on the beach, running, throwing themselves in the water, chasing each other and inventing adventures, I have realized how little free time they have during the rest of the year, children. And how happy they are when they enjoy it. In fact, they even learn as much or more than during the course. And they grow and laugh like never before.Do children have enough free time?
When the course begins your agendas will be filled. The little ones, in the nursery school can do recreational activities, but in confined and normally directed spaces. If their parents work they will arrive home late and even have extracurricular activities.
In the end they have little free and outdoor play time. Even their playing time is, many times, planned and intended to be "educational" activities that stain little and make little noise. And in the end, I just think they have free time.
At the beginning of school the teaching hours increase, the playing time decreases, homework appears. And normally planned and extracurricular activities are increasing until, I realize, that many children do not have time to play, or go to the streets, or get bored because there is not a moment of loneliness. Loneliness, so important for self-knowledge and creativity.
I wonder if the cause of this is that current parents are obsessed with filling their children's time to the minute and make it as productive as possible, as if working life were a career that must be started almost from the cradle.
Until the time of game is planned, and the one of leisure like television, computer or reading also. It is as if the children were not never free to choose Your activities. And the street, in the cities, is hostile.
It is also true that parents, sometimes because of such long work schedules and sometimes because they feel unable to accompany games or rely on the regulation of children, want them to have educators and classmates at all hours. That discharges them, whether out of necessity or because of their own pleasure or inability to offer the child more free experiences.
But seeing children play on the beach today, with the pure essence of summer games, hours and hours, without getting bored, alone or in a group or near their families, I realize that what they need most is that type of spaces: safe, free and natural, as it is the normal environment in which children should grow and learn. Do you think that the children have little free time?
