We know that play is fun, but there is so much more to it than that. Today, I’m talking about the importance of play-based childhoods, why our society has moved away from them and some strategies to bring play back into your family and create a play-based childhood for your kid.You’ll Learn:The importance of play for our kidsWhy play is a challenge in our current societyThe key elements of playHow to create a play-based childhood for your kidIdeas for child-led, open-ended games and toysOne of the most important things to understand is that learning happens through experience, not information. Play allows kids to struggle and learn in ways that feel fun, interesting and challenging.-----------------------------------Kids want to play, and they need to play. They have a lot to learn before they become adults, and experience (i.e. play) is the key to emotional, psychological, physical and cultural development.Why Play Is ImportantThe true purpose of play is for kids to learn how to be adults. They have to learn to move their bodies in a variety of ways, navigate a complex environment, develop fine motor skills, learn to interact with others and build lots of brain skills (both neurological and psychological). One of the most important things to understand is that learning happens through experience, not information. I like to joke that if lectures worked, I would not have a job. Kids don’t listen when we tell them how to act. They have to go through hard things, experience the impacts and figure it out for themselves. Play allows kids to struggle and learn in ways that feel fun, interesting and challenging. It works best when kids have unstructured time to explore their creativity, relationships, conflict, responsibility, and lots of other valuable skills. When we provide this open time, our kids learn faster and they start to understand how the world works. Play in our SocietyAs a society, we have moved away from play-based childhood and more toward structured, academic enrichment environments or screen-based childhoods. There are several reasons this has happened. Sometime around the early 90s, a lot more kids started applying to college and it became much more competitive. So, as a society, we started to work more to prepare kids for academic achievement and college admissions, even from a very young age. This led to more academic enrichment activities and a lot more structure. Don’t get me wrong - learning a foreign language, practicing an instrument, playing sports and taking art classes are cool, but when we fill kids’ schedules with more and more of these adult-led activities, there’s less time left over for unstructured play, curiosity and creativity. Sometimes, even families who want that unstructured time struggle because their kids’ friends are unavailable to come over to play or go to the park. So they end up enrolling their kids in more activities because that’s what their friends are doing. We are also living in a car-centric society. Many of us live in cities or areas where our kids can’t really get places on their own. There aren’t open spaces to explore, and they rely on parents to take them places. And many of us have lost some social connection. Maybe you don’t know your neighbors very well or your kids don’t go to the same school as other neighborhood kids. Finally, 24-hour news channels and constant alerts on our phones and social media feeds are putting negative news stories in our face that are meant to alarm us. Because of this, we don’t trust other adults as much, and we want to protect...