Friday 25 November 2016

Outdoor Play Is More Important For Children Than You May Think



Following is the description of how a film-maker connects little ones with nature and how he explains the significance of the outdoor play for children.David Bond does this in a plan called Project Wild Thing.


He begins with a feeling of uneasiness when he compares his own childhood to that of his children. His children are interest in technology and he himself wonders at how skillful they are in it at such a young age. His four year old little girl knew so much about electronic media and is devoted to TV. When he asked her how much she loved it, her response was in numbers, “One hundred billion.”



At the same time he noticed that his children had no fancy for playing outdoors. The modular playground equipment held no attraction for those young minds like it did for himself when he was a child.Sooner this uneasiness turned into fright and he decided to act on the problem. He interviewed experts and discussed his concern about declining rate of outdoor play. He shared his apprehensions about the impact of screen-based life on children and their resulting loss of contact with nature.

The onset of new social lifestyles and the domination of commercial forces have made today’s children a lot more susceptible to sedentary habits and technological entertainment instead of going outdoors and playing with modular playground equipment. This has more adverse effects than immediately seen. Children become lazy and at times unsocial. They also lose out on the actual human interactions and exposure to forces of nature. Staying indoors and away from human contact also makes children more likely to get anxious and irritable without actually knowing the reason.

Playing outdoors in the natural world is vital for children’s physical and mental development. From self-confidence to social skills to behavior control and emotional maturity, a major proportion of their personality development depends on their interactions with nature and other children and grownups. It is equal significant for a society’s future as children are responsible to shape it as they grow up. Bond turned to a psychology professor to ask what would happen if children didn’t play to which he replied, ‘We’d be left with an adult society that looks like Lord Of The Flies. Everything would be an unstructured mob.’ Scary stuff.

Now the film maker was determined to reverse the trend of children losing touch with nature. At the same time he wanted to give his film a touch of positive case for natural play instead of just making it dwell on what is going wring. For him conveying the positive impacts of outdoor play was more important than merely harping on the negative impacts of its absence.

Therefore Project Wild Thing is essentially produced with insistence on the benefits of playing outdoors. Nature and its benefits are highlighted as well as their significance for young minds and bodies. The techno-consumer kids and their parents are addresses with a positive outlook on what they have to gain by stepping outdoors and playing on commercial playground equipment.

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