How Outdoor Play is Beneficial for Children’s Development?

Children’s development is one of the highest concerns of every parent in the world. Be it mental health development, or physical health development, behavioral development, or personality development, all parents want their kids to excel in every arena. However, the crucial factor is how can we help them with all these development process going on.

Children need special care, attention, guidance and atmosphere for overall healthy development. Just like parents take every possible care of their children’s diet to fulfill all nutrients for their healthy growth and development physically and mentally, there are few factors and supplements that needs to be taken care of too.

Outdoor play or say outdoor time, is one of the crucial needs for kids or children to develop mentally, physically and psychologically. Ample time spent in outdoor or outside world close to nature is very important for their growth and development. Outdoor play plays a crucial role in children’s personality development, mental and physical development as well as behavioral development. 

What is outdoor play?

In this technology inclined world where kids are getting smart from a very childhood age and getting highly familiar with electronic gadgets, to reduce their screen time and close relationship with devices and technology, it has been highly crucial to make them understand the importance of outdoor time. Being parents, it’s our duty to make our kids willingly spend some time outdoors indulging in outdoor play, outdoor games and activities.

Spending ample time in outdoors for sprightly games and activities amidst nature and under the influence of nature is called outdoor play. The benefits of outdoor play for children’s development counts spending active time in outdoor games and sports within a team or with friends and family in real world, to learn the importance of nature, positive effects of nature, aspects of real world and real people, veridical social and communication skills, and significance of team work.

Benefits of Outdoor Play in Children’s Development

Unleashing your little monsters into the real world but less affected from reality is very important to make them familiar with nature, environment, society, people and other kids. It is all about expanding their boundaries to let them blend in the nature and watch hoe they cope up and how they respond. Not only mental and psychological development, letting your kids for outdoor play enhances their physical development too. They become pro-active, fit, flexible, improve vision, boost their immunity and metabolism.

Here are some of the best benefits of outdoor play for children’s development:

1. Reduces risk of myopia or nearsightedness

Spending time outdoors protect eyes against myopia or nearsightedness. Vision in kids are very vulnerable to get affected when they spend most of the time indoors watching television, gadgets and cellphones. Hence, for better vision outdoors play can be great beneficial factor for children.

2. Enhances body’s natural immunity

Staying indoors most of the time affects body’s natural immune system by making children prone to frequent infection, illness, flu and viral fever. However, playing outdoors close to nature and sunlight can improve immunity significantly to fight illness, infections and flu symptoms.

3. Boosts vitamin D levels

Sunlight is an excellent source of vitamin D which is very important for immunity and bone health. These days, when people are spending most of the time indoors, vitamin D deficiency is quite common in children and adults. Vitamin D helps in calcium and phosphorus absorption in body which enhances bone health in result.

4. Better bone health

One of the significant benefits of outdoor play for children’s development is improved and strong bone health. Getting exposed to enough sunlight provides a good amount of vitamin D which is also called as “sunshine vitamin”, helps in strengthening bones.

5. Pro-active and fearless kids

Playing outdoors makes children pro-active, smart and fearless by attitude and nature. When they spend ample time amidst nature with their friends and family their body experience good hormones surge that helps them improving their mood by minimizing their negative emotions.

6. Improved social and communication skills

Interacting with other kids, adults, and family friends improve their confidence level and they learn new communicating skills and love being socializing. This improves their reading, listening, writing and understanding skills.

7. Learn importance of team work

When your kids play outdoors, they make new friends and actively take part in sports. Team work is what they learn while playing together, they understand the importance of sharing, appreciating, being grateful, unity, togetherness, forgiving and all aspects of team work and how to keep team spirit up and healthy.

8. Improved athletic abilities

Your kids when spend ample time in outdoor play, they naturally gain interest in sports, games, athletic games such as running, jumping, throwing which enhance their athletic abilities that can be easily nurtured for their bright future in sports.

9. Enhances concentration and cognitive skills

Speaking about benefits of outdoor play for children’s development, how can we forget about psychological effects of nature and positive effect of socializing. Socializing improves cognitive skills and memory in kids and getting exposed to nature boosts concentration and focus by improving personality development in kids.

10. Learn new concept and ideas

“The mind that opens to a new idea never returns to its original size.”—Albert Einstein. It’s true, more the number of minds, more the number of ideas. Hence, when kids spend time outdoors playing and connecting with their new friends they learn new concepts, skills and ideas. 

11. Improved behavior

Children spending ample amount of time in outdoors improve their natural behavior. They become less irritable, more understanding, more composed, less stubborn and temperamental. Increased melatonin hormones due to sunlight exposure induce better sleep by enhancing their mood and lowering stress which boosts creativity in kids.

12. Better digestion and improved sleep 

Outdoors play involves running, jumping, exploring nature, involving in games and activities that helps in better digestion in kids and also improves sleep quality.