Occupational therapist, Angela Hanscom, thinks she may have discovered why some children struggle to develop balance.
Hanscom believes that a child’s ability to obtain balance correlates with the amount of time that they spend outdoors.
The therapist, who has found that most children spend an average of nine hours sitting a day is urging parents to get their children outside to play more often.
Hanscom thinks that children should be playing outside for at least three hours a day and preferably left to do as they please.
As the mum of a six-year-old, I do wish he could be outside as much as I was as a kid but our current housing situation makes that difficult.
We currently rent an apartment with no courtyard in the city centre. Our front door opens out onto the main road so letting him run around outside without supervision would be dangerous.
We would love to be able to buy or rent a house with a garden but at present that’s not an option for us so we have to make do with trips to the park every second day.
Hanscom has said that worries, not dissimilar to my own, are a large part of the reason why modern day children spend less time outdoors than their parents and grandparents.
Whether or not there are more dangers nowadays than there used to be previous generations of parents were a lot more free range when it came to getting their kids out of the house.
When asked about why this is the case by CBA, Hanscom replied;
“I think a lot of it has to stem from fear, fear and a lot of liability issues. So we started restricting what kids can do on playgrounds and actually taking away certain playground equipment because of fear of lawsuits.
I think there’s a lot of fear of strangers. It all stems back to fear of kids of getting hurt and stranger — that sort of thing.”
As parents, we always want to do what is in the best interest of our children and it’s very concerning that our need to protect them could, in fact, be harming their development.
One solution to this problem would be more green areas and apartment complexes with integrated play areas for the children living there.
For parents living in cities and built up areas, renting or buying a home with a large garden is often not possible and a new style of housing needs to be created to suit the requirements of the modern Irish family.
Until then I’m going to work on making sure my son gets to the park more often and for longer periods of time to help make sure his development and growth stay on track.
