I'm Bored!!! So Go Climb Something-The Power of Make Believe pt. 2

 We dig into how unstructured play helps children build emotional regulation and resilience through big body movement, rhythm, and real-world problem solving. From negotiating what to do when you’re bored to recovering after a fall or a failed climb, free play gives kids a safe place to feel frustration, try again, and discover what actually helps their bodies settle.

We also talk honestly about why many parents feel trapped by modern safety pressures. When every rare nightmare story goes viral and we live in a highly litigious culture, it’s easy to overcorrect into constant hovering. We explore that trade-off and why “no risk” can backfire by leaving kids less competent and more anxious. Along the way, we share practical boundaries that keep play genuinely independent: clear physical limits, behavior rules that prevent harm, and the kind of supervision that stays present without taking over.

Screens raise the stakes, so we get concrete about what to do when a kid says “I’m bored” and reaches for a phone. We discuss screen time limits, creating a realistic screen-free time plan, replacing screens with better options, and the importance of parents modeling the same habits. We wrap with ways neighborhoods, schools, and churches can build more opportunities for group free play with safe spaces and caring adults nearby. Subscribe, share this with a parent who needs it, and leave a five-star review so more families can find Brain-Based Parenting.

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Transcript

Welcome And Parenting Questions

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Brain-Based Parenting, the Boys Ranch podcast for families. We all know how hard being a parent is, and sometimes it feels like there are no good answers to the difficult questions families have when their kids are struggling. Our goal each week will be to try and answer some of those tough questions, utilizing the knowledge, experience, and professional training Cal Farley's Boys Ranch has to offer. Now here is your host, Cal Farley Staff Development Coordinator, Joshua Sprock.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

So how does unstructured play support emotional regulation and resilience?

SPEAKER_03 0:34

Having this positive, healthy experience can help us to learn to, you know, regulate our own self and we're not dependent on other things to do that for us.

SPEAKER_05 0:44

I mean, it's just, I mean, I don't, I don't know, depending on the activity. You know, we know that play, big movements, and you know, rhythmic repetitive stuff, that's regulation. And your body, if it, if you're doing the right things, it does what it needs to do, right? You know, there's a reason you're bored because you're you don't want to be stagnated. Maybe you need to move a little bit or something. And so while you're out there playing, like you said, you're you're you're learning how to cooperate, you're learning even by when you're by yourself. I mean, there's times I have to negotiate with myself. I uh what am I gonna do? I really I'm really torn. I want to read this book, or do I want to go play with my Hot Wheels or whatever? And you know, even that's like, man, I'm I'm bored, I want to do one or the other, but I had to learn how to make a choice and how to live with it, right? And make a decision. Yeah. And whatever that is, it is. I don't get that time back. You know, when dinner's ready, I gotta go. I gotta go eat. So that time, that playtime is over. I want to capitalize on plates. Yes, I'm a very structured person. So, but I don't know, that's that's what I think because I I got to learn, I got to learn for myself the things that I need to do when I get calm. Because really, the reality is when I got upset, my room was my safe place. You know, I you know, I had my own bedroom, my brother had his, but I I could go to my room, you know, I could I don't know, bounce a ball in there, whatever it is. I could turn on the little I had a little TV, I could turn that on and watch a cartoon or whatever. And you know what I mean? I could calm myself down doing a thing that I learned that works for me.

Playgrounds And Sensory Regulation

SPEAKER_03 1:58

Well, I think, you know, like playgrounds are great regulatory experiences, whether that's the the swinging for the vestibular or or just a large motor movement just running around the playground, whatever that might be, those are great ways to help kids learn both the resilience piece and the how to regulate themselves. And I know Josh, you do some of that with the crash and bump stuff and what with the what?

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Tell us what the crash and bump is it's a TBRI intervention that kind of helps kids understand it's more of a structured activity, but um, it helps kids kind of gain spatial awareness and we probably do a podcast on that at some point.

SPEAKER_03 2:34

Yeah, but it it's that same type of like same type of experiences or activities you would do in play, yeah. You do in crash and bump, whether that's jumping on a small trampoline or or running into different things or whatever that might be. And you get those same kind of experiences if you're out playing like that. Whether it's just like, you know, like different things, whether or even like weightlifting, any of those kinds of things where you're moving your muscles can really help with that, with that regulation.

SPEAKER_04 3:02

That goes back to some of what Sam was saying about just things about these experiences being multi-sensory. Boy, that just enriches. I'm sure I'm not a brain science guy, but it must enrich those connections to have multi-sensory things happening. But yeah, that playground is a good go-to talking about ways to incorporate more unstructured play this week or just be hey, just go to the park, right?

SPEAKER_05 3:25

Well, some of our most like I remember going playgrounds were so cool. And you know, sometimes they create an obstacle too. And you know, that's a it's kind of a safe place to to fail a little bit, right? If you couldn't climb this certain thing or you were scared to do so, you know, oftentimes there was other little kids around with you know my age, or even some of these younger kids, they they'd be like, No, you can do it, do it like this, and they teach you teach each other. You know, I had a kid, I'm I'm scared of heights, and I know that's not very high, but I I try to, you know, I didn't know how to climb one of these little poles, and one of these kids showed me how to do it, you know, and I didn't do it the first time, so I got to fail a bunch of times, you know. And if had it not that had I not had that experience, I wouldn't know how to do that, you know. And eventually I'm the guy showing kids how to do it, or I'm just jumping off this thing and sliding or climbing it, you know. Lots of time to to fail, and I you know, failure is good, it's it's like low, uh like low stakes frustration, right? Like I'm frustrated, but it ain't how I don't have to climb this thing, but I'm getting encouraged to do it because that's what the group's doing, or you know, and I don't know. It does it make sense what I'm saying, like it does. You know, so much stuff that you learn just from getting out there and exploring it, and now I'm confident, hey, I can do this, and I learned a new skill today, right? I thought, I mean, that was that was one of the most fun times ever.

SPEAKER_03 4:34

Yeah, and I think that's just important for that self-esteem development, that your self-identity to know, hey, I can do things, yeah, I can try new things, and to help you be able to take that step out.

SPEAKER_04 4:46

That's it's funny, there's a trade-off when there I know Jonathan Height, he makes the case that we've made things too safe. I was thinking about that, yeah. And and he he would and he's and he's done his homework. I really appreciate the things he's written. And I'm not saying I'm in the tank with everything he said, I'm not saying that at all, but he would suggest that in the 90s there was a big shift where we got into a just very frightened about trying to make everything so safe. And Josh, we've talked before in podcasts where when I was a kid, one of the commercials that would run frequently was I'm stuck on band-aids because band-aid stuck on me. There were a number of different jingles associated with band-aids, like Bactine, different things for abrasions. That was a okay, why is that? You hadn't heard about any of that for decades. Yeah. Okay. Well, we used to it used to not be so safe, and we used to get stitches and and break bones and things like that. I'm not saying that uh that was a good thing, but to make things just so a bubble of where there's no risk at all probably would develop a human being that's gonna be less safe navigating the world going forward.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

More scared about it. Yeah, that's the interesting thing of the whole thing. Like pe kids are safer today than they've ever been in human history. But they're the most anxious generation in human history. Those two things shouldn't go together, but they do.

SPEAKER_04 6:13

More anxious and more fearful. But then also they know less about they have have had less of those multi-sensory encounters with the world as it works, so they're gonna be less competent, have less less dexterity, less familiarity with the natural world. So they're gonna be less safe in it going forward as adults or the things that they do encounter. Where that person that grew up, you know, on, you know, out on the playground is gonna probably be safer going forward.

SPEAKER_03 6:40

Well, I know some of the some of the research, like in the global flourishing study, talks about how young adults now tend to struggle more with mental health kinds of stuff than they have in the past. And so is that correlated to or related to maybe some of that trying to make things more safer growing up and less experiential?

SPEAKER_04 6:58

Yeah, I know don't want to go off on a tangent too far. This isn't so practical, but we're not gonna solve this problem here in this podcast anyway. But a couple things that change the landscape, uh you you have to admit, would be one, became such a litigious culture where there's just lawsuits around every corner. Yeah. So everybody's gotta make everything super, super safe where nobody can ever possibly get hurt. And then the other thing is the boogeyman gets in her head, and I think hate height talks about this, but okay, bad things have happened, you know, have always happened. Well, now if a bad thing happens, that nightmare event that's an outlier, it's a thing that's like lightning striking or of you know, whatever, that happens and it goes viral instantly on social media or even before that on the cable news 24-7 cycle, that child abduction is just they run it and they run it, and the images and the images, so it's all in our heads that oh, it is not safe out there when the facts would say it's that we're actually safer now than we were than we probably ever have been.

Boundaries That Keep Play Independent

SPEAKER_01 8:02

All right, so thinking about all that, what boundaries should parents set to keep unstructured place safe but genuinely independent?

SPEAKER_04 8:09

I think my grandma has had a pretty good idea there. But she was she was stay out of our business, but she was watching. And what and if if any if anything became unsafe or somebody started to bully or something, she was right there.

SPEAKER_03 8:23

Yeah. Well, and even even for the adolescents now to let them go out, they have apps now that you put on their phones so you know where they're at. You can even see how fast they drive and everything else. It's crazy. That's how sunshine supervises you, Sam.

SPEAKER_05 8:37

Absolutely. That's where I'm at right now. You know, I was thinking back to the story I said earlier, there were rules to my playtime, right? I I didn't actually know when I had to go inside as I didn't have a watch on me. But I did know that I couldn't cross the boundary of the yard. You know, we had a yard, that's the boundary. If you cross that, there's gonna be a problem, right? We, you know, obviously when there's conflict with between us, then a rule had to be imposed by our adults that said, hey, we need to be safe. We can't be putting hands on each other, can't touch each other, kind of things like that, you know. So, right, free play with with some, you gotta have some rules, right? You gotta they gotta have some. I can't remember what the other thing I was gonna say.

SPEAKER_03 9:12

Well, I think you can give choices, you know, because you can create space for for play, like like with whatever age, you know, you can either do this activity or this activity. And so those are both things that that are okay with you as the adult, but the child can can have some choice and therefore can have their own initiative to to kind of keep going with.

SPEAKER_05 9:33

Also, you know, you know, tech technology really is part of play now for kids, you know, video games, things like that. And nobody's saying those are necessarily a bad thing, but put limits on it, right? Here's how much time you get, here's here's the rules of the social interaction, right? One of the craziest uh I didn't even realize this, but I had let my kids have consoles, and you know, they're all online connected. This is some years ago. Then I realized my daughter was talking to somebody, right? And then giving the phone number out. And I'll go, hey, what's going on with that? Now I don't know that it was an adult, a kid, I know. They tell she told me it's a kid, but I didn't I had the time I didn't know to impose that limit. And I'm like, hey, we can't do that. So I had to like say, we I need to limit friends, or I had to I don't remember what I did, but I had to impose some kind of a thing to say, hey, we can't we can't be talking to people we don't know and just giving them our where we live or our stuff because they don't know any better. So that was a bat on me not thinking ahead of of that. And now it's you know how much technology can it give, but giving the limit, you know, within the within the constraint of the time you allow them to play. What do you allow them to play? All those things. I think you like John said earlier, you provide you provide the tools or the materials, they can figure out how to play it, but that's how that's also how you impose some structure. Is you you you only got what you have.

SPEAKER_03 10:42

Well, I think as family as as the parents also, uh we probably need to. I'm just now kind of learning some of this stuff recently in the flow of our week. We probably need to set up some screen-free time, you know, for the whole family, including us, you know, whether that's an hour every evening or whatever that looks like to give time for our creative self to to creative juices to start flowing. Because we need that as well, just as much as our kids do.

SPEAKER_04 11:09

Yeah, we I was thinking physical boundaries with this this just we we had the don't cross the highway. Uh-huh. Oh, yeah. You had those those things like that, don't cross the highway and be home when the you hear the noon whistle. And our our town that they still the fire whistle plate at noon would go off, and that was from back when the farmers would know when to come in to eat, and they still did that. So come in, be in when you hear the noon whistle, and then if we were out in the afternoon, had to come in when you heard the five o'clock church bells. I'm trying to think if we had any other boundaries than that. We needed more, that's for sure. But that was but another thing about this was it was a nice teaching thing for my parents. There were things that they taught us that they expected of us when we were out of eye shot. And not saying that I'm suggesting that you you know listeners let their children out of eye shot. That's another another podcast. But we probably needed more supervision than we had. There was something valuable about they were teaching us what they expected when we were out and about, and there were things that we knew were not okay. So it was all it all worked together for good, and we somehow survived it.

SPEAKER_05 12:17

Well, you know, too, is what do you do with it? So here's what I mean is there's times I had a lot of unsupervised play, construction play. You know, pretty much I can go outside all day, and and now where I lived, there was a neighbor, it was all kid, it was a lot of kids, and we all go off and do our thing, and sometimes we have great days, and everybody got along, and sometimes you didn't have great days, and we negotiated the problem as young people would, whatever that was. But there are lots of times that my mom was aware of what happened. What here's what I here's where the learning came in is that she gave us feedback, like you just said. When I messed up out there and I didn't own it right away, you know, because hey, it's between us. We're the kids dealt with it, we're we're good, we weren't good, and because the other moms or dads had something to say, and so the parents got together and set limits and boundaries with us. Hey, if if that don't stop, we're not gonna do this again, whatever that was. But I but here's what I could appreciate that I got feedback. Hey, you can't talk to people that way, or you can't talk to other adults that way, things like that, because you're learning as a kid when another adult enters your kid world, and how do we treat them, you know, too, right? And so my mom was a great source of a ton of feedback. Although she's not there to see it when she hears, she was not afraid to say something about it and it reinforce a boundary for or or enforce a new boundary saying this is your new limit, you know what I mean? Because there's a time we crossed the she didn't say we couldn't go to this side, so we went to that side and crossed the fence, and we went over to a store and she found out about it and we got a new boundary. Don't do that again, son. It's not safe. The adults always know why it's not safe. I don't know. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_03 13:41

When I was thinking about that, it that is part of the structure. What you're talking about is is checking in with your kids when they get back from an event or from what they're outing or whatever that is, and probably helping them process those things and giving them space, safe space to talk about their experiences.

SPEAKER_04 13:56

And isn't that what it's all about? I mean, that's the joy of life and having family, isn't it? Is having that that chat. What'd you do today?

SPEAKER_05 14:04

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And viewers can't see it, but I'm smiling because this is like a trip down memory lane. These are the best years of my life that we're talking about, right? The freedom of play was so awesome and really kind of formed me into who I am, same for you guys, I'm sure.

Stepping Back Without Checking Out

SPEAKER_01 14:19

All right, so how can parents gradually step back from over-directing without feeling negligent?

SPEAKER_05 14:24

You gotta define negligence a little bit, right? Negligence means you're you're you're just not either you don't care or you're not supervising adequately, maybe. I mean, y'all can jump in on that. But it's way different than over-directing. Like directing is I'm telling everybody what to do. Here's what we're doing next, here's how we're doing it, here's the time. There's great times for that. You know, I think it also depends on your kiddos' ages, right? I I I I obviously was a step way back when I had teenagers.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

Well, I think when I was thinking about this question, I think there's like when you when you break let your kids go play out in the neighborhood now, you feel the pressure of society saying that that's not okay, right? And you feel judged. Yeah, that's a good point.

SPEAKER_04 15:00

That's kind of what I was thinking when I was that that's a and I've I've heard that and I've read that different places, but yeah, but we really have had such a shift, and you know, like I said, Height, he would say in the 90s things really shifted. So now if you have a child that's playing and you're not just hovering over that child, well, you know, there's a you know, someone thinks maybe you're a bad parent, and maybe you're gonna get called in. But yeah, there's uh how can parents gradually step back from over directing without feeling negligent? I would feel like I as a parent, if I am just uh using this podcast as an excuse to not be parenting for a while to give myself a break and well go uh unstructured play so that really my agenda is so that I have the selfish time to myself and I'm checked out. No, that's not that's not tuned in, not being a good parent in that time. And yeah, I need to be thinking about how do I keep my child safe where they can it is a tough one.

SPEAKER_03 15:56

It's kind of a tierope. So no, even between just between me and my wife, there are things that I love that she's all over me about. Why are you letting them do that kind of thing? Whatever that might be, whether that's climbing up on top of the roof of the house or or whatever it is.

SPEAKER_04 16:12

Do you think, John, that do you all think that um males tend to have a higher tolerance for rough housing than females do than our wives do? I mean, I would say that 10, I'm saying 10 too. I'm offering it up. Yeah. Probably in general, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 16:26

I think I mean I I allowed a lot more than my wife allowed, probably. But that's her job to keep me safe, too. That's why she's tracking me right now. No, I I was thinking a different way to say this for parents that are thinking about, well, how do I know? Well, at some point, when you start, you're a director. I have to run it all. I have to make sure. Because the safety then I just become the safety supervisor, right? Now I'm just making sure the environment is, you know, and then I let them do their because when I find myself sometimes, you know, watching kids play, and uh gosh, when my kid, my baby, my first, my oldest climbed that slide for the first time. It was a tall slide back in Atlas, Texas, and it was a tall metal, shiny slide, and it doesn't really have great guardrails because that thing was built probably before I was born, and I'm watching him climb this thing, and my guts are turning, and all I want to do is get up there and be behind. Now, I'd seen him climb a bunch of slides before and slide down very successfully. But the parent in me wants to go up there and hold him and go, but then I didn't. And I just kind of stayed down there. If he falls, I open up a catch. A supervisor at that he can do this task. This task is just a little higher than the last one, and he's done it a hundred times. I just gotta let go and let it happen. That doesn't mean my guts can't turn, that doesn't mean I can't feel the weight. But you know, is it unsafe or am I just anticipating? Which is it? You know, there's sometimes when I watch other kids, you know, my kids play and I know the solution to the problem, and I want to just put my hands in there and like put the puzzle piece right there. Like, there it is, it's right in front of your face, you know. Because I have the knowledge and foresight, and I've done this a million times. They haven't. I have to let them do it. It's not unsafe. Why do I need to fix the puzzle piece? There's no unsafety here, right? It's more about my own comfort or annoyance or whatever you want to call it. But at this point, I'm just supervising from afar, depending on the tasks they're doing. And if it's a new task, I imagine you got to do some teaching and you got to do some, you know, directing more. But once they got it, let them get it, you know.

SPEAKER_03 18:05

Yeah, I do think that you you you have to be really really careful because you can kind of crush some some self-esteem and and their identity if you overdirect too much. Mike, you're gonna go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 18:18

Oh no, that's no, I just appreciate your point you're making.

SPEAKER_03 18:21

Yeah, I I just think you have to be, and I know a often I had to catch myself as a parent when my kids were helping me with things, just like what Sam was talking about, whether that's working on the car or whatever it might be. I also know that there were times where that cost me more money because things got messed up. And so there is sacrifice involved in being a parent at times and and your child's development in a healthy way. And so that's that's a put that's a piece of it too.

Boredom Without Screens And What Helps

SPEAKER_01 18:53

I think there's a lot of trial and error in this as well. And uh knowing as a parent, you're probably gonna make some mistakes and you know that's not the end of the world. Give yourself some grace, give other parents grace when you see them making mistakes. I think that's pretty key in this is as well. So, what do you say to a child or a teen who says they're bored and immediately reaches for their their screen, their tablet, their phone?

SPEAKER_05 19:13

Well, I might say, hey, it's okay. I understand you're bored, and it's okay to be bored, but let's not do the screen first. That's what else can we probably would also imagine you gotta have stuff for them to do, you know, having paper around creative materials, or you know your kids, you know what they like. Put those things around, let them figure it out. Hey, screen time is not an option right now, but I'm bored. I understand you're bored. I have something to do, I'm cooking or whatever, right?

SPEAKER_03 19:34

But I think that's also a good opportunity relationally say if you can't just have hey, come help me with this. Yeah, because that's just gonna be an opportunity to really strengthen that relationship.

SPEAKER_04 19:44

Yeah. It that's uh I don't see how to just have them out in pure, unstructured play, how that works if they're bored, ready to go right to that screen. But like you said, in this particular case, it need there needs to be kind of this in-between where let's go alongside each other and um let's grab our fishing poles. You know, here at Boys Ranch, we got the greatest little fishing ponds on campus, but let's go out and let's go fish. And that there's some some direction in that, sure. But I think that at that particular point, if you have a teen ready to go to a screen, I it seems like you're kind of at an impasse. That's a tough one, and uh to just bark at them and say, hey, you're you know, don't don't pick up your phone, go find something to do. I think that's a time when you need to, you know, we've watched some house parents. We had some right over here, if you remember, at Hamilton home for some years that were really good at this particular part where, okay, we're gonna do something non-screen right now. But that that house parent had some old wisdom about him, and he would go out and do the things with them. They're gonna do a slip and slide on a blue tarp with dishwater soap or you know, all these different things that they do, he would do it with them. And that seemed to be a way to really to get away from the screen and do something that's a little more uh I don't know, sensory.

SPEAKER_03 21:01

Yeah, and I think proactively you could you could sit down with your kids and just come up with a a screen free time plan. And these are all the different activities and things that uh that you can do during that time. Yeah, that's a great idea. I mean, just to help them problem solve, especially if they're if you are transitioning from from having your kids on screen a lot, just to help them with that transition and to help them plan what else they can do, let's come up with some things together that are gonna be good for you and acceptable for me.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

I was just thinking that if they are used to being on screens whenever they're bored and they and you do start to set new boundaries, you might be prepared that they are probably gonna push back against that for a little while and sure and just be prepared for that and don't don't cave into it. Because I think what you were saying earlier, Mike, that once you went to you know, you just started to have fun when it was over, right? And that's kind of what will happen. They'll eventu they'll have their little blow up or whatever, but then they're gonna have to actually do it and then they'll actually start to enjoy it. So

SPEAKER_03 22:00

May require a little more of you when you make that transition in the beginning. And more of your intentional time with them starting those activities. And then anyway.

SPEAKER_05 22:10

I watched a wonderful parent one time, and I'm not meaning that sarcastically in one bit. They're great parent. And they're trying to fight this screen battle, right? But they're on a screen all day. Like, hey, yeah, you can't expect them to not be on their stuff if you're on your stuff, man. Like they're they're learning from you, right? And screens can be highly addictive. I mean, this is not what this podcast is about, but this let's face the reality of what it is. It's dopamine hit a lot of them, and they feel good. And these video games, you gotta beat the next level. All the good stuff I've said in the podcast before. What I mean is this it's not an easy fight. This is what Josh said. Once, once it's in, it's hard. Uh take the hooks out. It's built that way, designed that way, all purpose. So be mindful of one is what to do. So prepare for it, right? If you know this is what you want your life to be and you or you've realized you've made a mistake, yeah, it's it's kind of like anything else. You gotta kind of wean it off. You get to the point where you wanna be. You don't expect it to happen right on right in one night. Obviously, you have the control, you can put the screen away. There's gonna be battle. But if you don't replace something with something else that's better, that's not gonna work out. Then you're gonna just have miserable children. Because, like I said, you know, at least I had something to do in my house. I didn't, I wasn't just bored and had nothing to do. The the ability for creativity was there. When I made that board game, there was pencils around, there was papers around I could access. I remember I I tied it all together, I found a three-hole punch, I tied it all together with bread, you know, the little things that tie your bread up. That's how that was my binding. Okay, creativity happened because all those things are available to me and it was permissive. I was able to do it. Nobody told me no, and so let me do it, right? And I had a TV, I could have watched TV all day, and I didn't want to do that, right? Because that that's not that's not what made me happy is watching TV. Plus, we only had three channels. And and and then, but you know, does it does that make sense what I'm saying? I think that you know, you you gotta prepare for a fight, like what Josh said. But also prepare the battlefield first. You have to model what you want to see. If you don't want your kids on the screen at dinner time, you absolutely can't have it. You can't do it yourself. Yeah, I mean that I mean they're gonna call you a hypocrite behind your back easily. You know, let's be real, right?

How Communities Make Play Possible

SPEAKER_04 24:03

But but this I would say this move right here of okay, our lives have just kind of overnight before we had a chance to really realize what was going on, we really did get uh what'd you say, the hooks of the uh the you said the hooks got stuck into us with these screens. It would seem really important to me to start to integrate some unstructured play. I know I'm gonna need to do some a lot of work here to not be a hijack person whenever we start to try to talk about adding this new thing or this move here. So to have some of this self-awareness so that I can be playful about the way that that even with the pushback I might get, I can be in that place of of playfulness interacting rather than that hijack. Even if you're not yelling or you don't have a stern voice and you, you know, kind of keep that under control, they can sense the hijack. Sure. I would say this piece to add this into to integrate some unstructured play. Don't try to do if with any of the things recommended on the podcast, you don't want to try to do everything overnight too much. Just just just add a bit and make sure you're checking yourself and that you're not being hijacked and condescending when you're trying to do it. This ought to be fun. I mean, really, yeah. This is exciting. This whole topic is really exciting.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

Yeah, I want to go play Star Wars right now and then So how can neighborhoods, schools, churches, how can they help create safe opportunities for group free play?

SPEAKER_05 25:26

Having a space to do it first. I mean, you know, I have noticed that, you know, a lot of like when I go to churches, they have a little play area. When I I went to a building yesterday when we went to a get a gathering and I was walking around new offices and they had a child's play area there, you know. So that's just it's just there's stuff in there for people to play with right there. You that's one starting point that the community can help with. Let's let's spark that stuff. Let's not let's have something for kids to do when there is nothing else to do, right?

SPEAKER_03 25:51

Yeah, I know. One of the churches I was going to at one time, they had a a big indoor play area and they used it for like Friday nights, so the parents could go on date night and the kids could come there and and they would play. Of course, that'd be group playtime that's supervised and along with unstructured because they had the indoor climbing stuff and all that. And so it incorporated kind of all those pieces together, which is typically fun.

SPEAKER_04 26:16

Yeah, there's a lot of things to do with that, isn't there? Here here at here at Boys Ranch, we have the listeners may or may not know we in the chapel upstairs, we have the cafe area. One of the neat things that I've seen over the years happen, my predecessor, you know, from over 20 years ago, they they had, or one of the predecessors had a whole bunch of board games up there of the old board games, Battleship and you know, Monopoly. Chaplain Ray over the years would have different nights where they would have cafe time and the kids would go up and it was unstructured. It was supervised, they were safe, but it was unstructured, self-directed, and it was really neat. This is already into the screen age when this is happening, but the kids would pull out those board games and they would play those board games, and you could just sense that there was life in the room. Just it was good laughter, and it seems like the kids came to life. And so that that's stuff that's easy to do for a church to have a you don't have to do some big remodel or build a new building, but to have some space, a safe space where there could be some hangout time with loving adults in the in the room, but the kids have unstructured uh play together.

SPEAKER_03 27:25

Yeah, and also for for teenagers like a fifth quarter. I remember our church after the Friday night football game, we'd have a fifth quarter where kids could come over and and eat, have some games and play or or watch a movie or whatever it is.

SPEAKER_05 27:38

You know, I think that's really neat, you know, it's you know, especially with teens, you know, they I you know maybe it's because we're at work, but you're always kind of feeling that teens are up to no good. And that's not true. You know, I I I you know I remember when I was a teen. I wasn't actively looking to do the wrong thing. I that's not that wasn't my thing. Yeah, sure, there's outliers. You know, we always had opportunities to to have those to get together, is like what John just talked about. And you know, and thinking about it now about community. You know, I was watching this new apartment complex built. One of the first things they're building is this playground, this park. Because even adults need outside time, right? They need a place to walk, they need a place to walk the dog, they need to, you know, so these things are that that's what they're doing intentionally to attract residents, right? There's a playground, a swimming pool. All the things that kids are gonna want to do are there, and so that's what everybody kind of needs to do. There's also kind of some in some places there's low tolerance for kids and noise and messiness. You know that I mean it's gotta be listen, if you don't like that kind of thing, you just gotta avoid it. I don't go to the I don't go to the uh east side of the mall. Okay, it's loud over there. But I don't have kids, I don't have to worry about it. But I like that there's one because when my grandkids visit, guess where I take them? To the noisy little place on the east side of the mall. Yeah, you know, I'm not happy there, but they are sure happy and I'm watching them interact. So I appreciate that because the mall is boring for children, they're not buying anything. I'm the one walking around doing all the buying, or when I go here or there. It's nice to say, hey, when we're done here, we're gonna take you there. You know, we used to go to McDonald's and they for sure were gonna go play on those little balls, you know. That what I mean. It's so there's opportunity there to have some fun, play, supervised, and also, you know, direct some traffic when you need to, things like that.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

No, it's very good. I was thinking about neighborhoods and some things you guys said before. Be a good neighbor and keep an eye on the kids in the neighborhood. If you need to go out and intervene in something, you know, be respectful, but help kids be safe.

SPEAKER_05 29:17

Yeah, you know, and also I was thinking, you know, in a lot of these neighborhoods, you know, there's different age kids there, you know, and there was you know, it was really neat. You know, and of course, within reason, right? Take this with reason, but you know, there was these older kids, maybe when I think when I was maybe 10, there's these 15-year-olds, they're the coolest guys, right? They're faster. They but they these guys, there was two of them, and they would take a leadership role and play football with all the little kids, right? So these there's some models in the community we can look up to, and they're teaching us stuff too. So even mixed age play that's safe and supervised is is a good thing. You know, we run into everybody in our neighborhood, and then eventually I become the big kid. And I'm well, I was never tall, but but I become the older kid, and we get to teach the little guys how to play football and how to play basketball and really kind of neat stuff that the community brings. And the only way we could do that is that we had those opportunities built in, like the courts and the balls and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_03 30:07

Yeah, and I know there are churches who will have like potlucks at the at the uh at the park. Yeah. So they can get together and kids can can play together and interact together. And and I know that you know, we've played on lots of like school playgrounds or church playgrounds, you know, having really nice playgrounds there for for kids or even the kids in the community to come around and play. And that kind of goes back to what Mike talked about a little bit about the litigiousness of of this era right now and how sometimes we shy away from that kind of stuff because we don't want to attract that possibility and want to get sued. Yeah.

Subscribe Review And Ways To Help

SPEAKER_01 30:41

All right. Thank you for listening today. Before we send you outside for some free playtime, I want to make sure you all have subscribed to Brain Paced Parenting and give us a five-star review. Until next time, you might have to loan out your cohort text today. Just make sure you remember and get it back.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

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