To Play or Not to Play With Your Kid?
9 min read
The first time that Megan Roth, an urban planner in Calgary, Canada, Googled independent play, her daughter had just received a number of toys for her second birthday. None engaged her for long. The toddler preferred doing household tasks with her parents: refilling the bird feeder, replacing batteries in the smoke detector. Roth thought it was cute at first, but then she started hearing that her daughter should be able to play without much, if any, adult input. Family members commented on what they saw as her daughter’s short attention span. In parenting forums and on social-media accounts, tips for encouraging solitary play were as abundant as beads in a craft kit. “It caused me a lot of worry,” Roth told me, “and anxiety that I had ruined her somehow.”
The phrase independent play, popularized by the parenting educator Janet Lansbury, was almost unheard-of 15 years ago. Today, it is Googled more often than baby-led weaning or free-range parenting. Toy brands such as Lovevery, Melissa & Doug, and Hape market their products’ ability to encourage children’s autonomy. And then there’s social media. The parenting influencer Jerrica Sannes, for instance, has written that to ensure children’s cognitive and psychological development, parents “have to set aside a minimum of 5 hours per day for independent, unstructured, adult-free, sensory-rich, risky, creative PLAY particularly throughout the early stages of brain development,” and that playing with young children “actually often undermines” connection.
For some parents, the idea that it’s good for children to play on their own can offer relief: How reassuring to hear that, far from being neglectful because we don’t love playing princesses, we might be better off refraining. Yet for other parents, the advice has become just one more thing to fret about; they wonder if they’re playing with their children too much. Veronica Lopes, a mother in Toronto, told me that she recently created a “parking lot” made of tape and cardboard rolls for her 2-year-old. They used it to play cars together. But “I’ve started to doubt myself,” she said. “The more I’m hearing people talk about this, the more I’m like … Am I not doing this right?”
You can hear this concern echoed on a podcast hosted by Lansbury. In one episode, she problem-solves for a mom whose 14-week-old infant will lie on the floor to play alone for only “20 minutes, tops,” before crying. In another, a mother says that although her eight-month-old is happy to play independently for “long periods,” he loses it when she leaves the room. “Is he developmentally ready to be left alone for a little bit? Absolutely,” Lansbury responds. “It’s much easier for him and for us to get comfortable with this the earlier we start.”
Over the past few years, while reporting on parenting issues, I’ve spoken with dozens of child psychologists and researchers who have left me with the impression that few aspects of parenting are black-and-white except, perhaps, for one: Responding to children in a way that is sensitive, prompt, and attuned to their stage of development is crucial to raising healthy, happy children. So look at the recent discourse on independent play and it’s easy to see why some parents are confused. For one, it seems full of contradictions: Independent play means without parents, but also with parents; it’s natural, but it has to be taught from an early age; we should trust children’s instincts in play, but not when their instincts lead them to seek our involvement. In an interview, Sannes told me, “When I say ‘independent play,’ what I mean is unstructured, free play … It’s really just letting go of control of children’s time.” I also spoke with Lansbury, who said that encouraging independent play is never about “forcing” a behavior. “Nothing I teach is about ‘getting’ a child to do anything,” she said. “It’s about getting ourselves out of the way.” (After our conversation, she emphasized this point in a new blog post on independent-play “myths.” No.1, she wrote: “Independent play means leaving children alone.”)
Yet some parents seem to be absorbing the message—especially from social media, the great flattener of nuanced communications—that in playing with their kids, they might be doing them a disservice, and that all children, regardless of age, temperament, or ability, should be capable of initiating and sustaining play for long periods. I asked Roberta Golinkoff, a developmental psychologist and the founder of the Child’s Play, Learning, and Development Lab at the University of Delaware, if she has come across any research supporting such interpretations. “I’ve been in this business a long time,” she said—50 years. “I have not seen anything about that.” The developmental psychologist Catherine Tamis-LeMonda, who leads NYU’s Play and Language Lab, also put it to me bluntly: “It’s entirely wrong, according to science.”
The scientific literature rarely refers to “independent play.” Studies instead focus on “unstructured” or “free” play, which is child-led with no predetermined goal—and has been shown to have numerous benefits. Studies have found, for example, that children who participate in more unstructured play are likely to have better emotional self-regulation, executive functioning, and academic performance later in life.
Notably, free play doesn’t mean that adults have to remain uninvolved. (One study co-authored by Golinkoff listed participating in “Mommy & Me classes”—presumably with Mommy—as “free, unstructured play.”) In fact, research has shown that the younger the child, the more support they need. Sandra Russ, a clinical child psychologist at Case Western Reserve University, told me this was especially true of pretend play. “Many young kids need a little help,” she said. “Scaffolding is important.” Russ has found that if a parent “models” a bit—pretending a red Lego is a fire engine, say—the child is more likely to pursue the play and pretend on their own. Older neurodivergent children can also need scaffolding, she said. “They have trouble making up a story. They have trouble seeing that a Lego can be many different things.”
And an abundance of research indicates that children benefit from playing with their parents. One review of multiple studies suggested that when fathers play with their kids, the children can develop better cognitive, social, and emotional skills. Parents acting playfully has been linked with various advantages, such as improved emotion regulation, in their children. And a 2018 report from the American Academy of Pediatrics noted that parent-child play can help reduce “toxic stress” to “levels that are more compatible with coping and resilience.”
Play with an adult also seems to keep children, including babies, more engaged. One study compared the attention spans of 12-month-olds when they played alone versus with a parent and found that many of the babies looked at objects longer, and were more attentive, when playing with a parent. Children also tend to be happier playing on their own if an adult plays with them first, Tamis-LeMonda told me. “Thinking that By participating, my child will be less inclined to be independent is wrong,” she said.
What’s more, researchers have found risks when adults don’t actively engage with children who are trying to connect. The University of Calgary child psychologist Sheri Madigan conducted a meta-analysis this year adding to a mountain of research suggesting that responding quickly and appropriately to young children’s “signals of need and/or interest” has long-term benefits. It’s fine to put a happy baby down to play, Madigan told me. But “when that child is ever distressed, you want to be in that space with them immediately”—and respond in a way that they understand. For a preverbal child, that usually means picking them up.
I asked Madigan about advice I’d heard Lansbury give on her podcast about not “saving” a crying baby right away: (“Immediately respond, but verbally,” Lansbury says. Otherwise “the baby gets the message … that they needed to be rescued.”) Madigan told me that this “may foster independent play, but it won’t foster a secure-attachment relationship”—the kind in which children believe that their caregiver will be there to keep them safe, and which has been shown to correlate with positive developmental outcomes, including better mental health. She added that even children who seem to excel at playing autonomously might be aching inwardly. In such children, she has found higher cortisol levels, indicating stress. “So while they’re engaging in independent play,” she said, “biologically, they’re struggling.”
One proponent of kids having more adult-free playtime is the anthropologist David Lancy, whose book Learning Without Lessons: Pedagogy in Indigenous Communities examines how children learn and play in small, preindustrial societies. Lancy told me that in the cultures he has studied, it’s seen as strange, even laughable, for adults to play with children. But his findings come with a caveat: Although hunter-gatherer societies rarely feature adult-child play, this doesn’t mean that children are left to play alone, or that anyone wants them to. In close-knit communities, the child still plays in multiage groups; the ideal is for them to seek out play with peers and other caregivers, such as older siblings. “There is solo play,” Lancy said. “But it’s not desirable.”
The challenge in societies built around the nuclear family, as in the United States, is that children might have fewer playmates close to home—turning parents into a default. But in the U.S., there’s little evidence to show that parents spend too much time playing with their kids. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, parents play with their children ages 6 and younger an average of 37 minutes a day. And the play-based approach taken by many day cares and preschools, combined with those centers’ high child-to-caregiver ratios, means that young children being cared for outside the home are probably already learning to entertain themselves some of the time.
Researchers note, too, that children play when we don’t realize it. Banging a spoon during lunch? Play. Mouthing a shoe? Play. Helping to replace batteries? Also play. “They will explore and discover on their own those times you’re not there,” Tamis-LeMonda said. “And they’ll explore and discover when you are there. Participating does not mean your child will now not discover.”
Few experts would argue that children shouldn’t get more time for autonomous play, especially outdoors. But as Lancy and others have noted, the diminishment of this kind of play often stems from external factors: crime, street traffic, increasing schoolwork. If we want children to play more without adult involvement, we might be better off focusing on goals such as preserving urban green space, reducing homework, and protecting recess—all of which play researchers tend to advocate for.
The anxiety among parents over how to best “teach” independent play points to another problem. It suggests a belief—despite what we know about how genetic, environmental, socioeconomic, and other factors can shape behavior—that our children’s personalities are as pliable as Play-Doh, and that any lumpy bits are indications that we have only ourselves, the sculptors, to blame. The fact that adults’ quest for perfectionism seeps into play, which every person I spoke with agreed should be the easy, joyful part of parenting, feels particularly sad. “Moms,” Golinkoff said, “have enough to worry about.”
In one of her blog posts on fostering independent play, Lansbury used the example of a baby rolling a ball. “Don’t roll the ball back,” she advised. Instead, “just quietly watch, or offer a simple reflection like, ‘you pushed that ball and it rolled away.’” Reading it, I was reminded of one of my most savored memories from my daughter’s infancy: the time she first tossed a ball to me. I’ve always been semi-allergic to games of catch. But I didn’t hesitate before throwing the ball back. For 10 minutes, we continued, her peals of laughter piercing every round. I’m glad I didn’t tarnish the moment by questioning my instinct. I’m grateful I threw the ball.
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