Despite the pressure that parents often feel to schedule their children’s every activity, it is important not to over-schedule your child.  Make sure you are leaving your child with enough free time to encourage good, old-fashioned play.  Research has shown that that play is essential to a child’s development.  Play contributes to the cognitive, social, emotional, and physical well-being of children.  Leaving your child with unstructured time to play in whatever way he or she chooses offers all of the following benefits:

• Play encourages a child’s creativity and imagination — they make up their own games and create their own imaginary world.  Creativity and imagination are an important part of brain development.
• Play allows an opportunity for a child to work out his or her feelings, fears, and frustrations about things.  For example, a child can address fears at school by playing the role of teacher and helping her “students”. 
• Play helps children learn, as they engage and interact with the world around them.
• Play builds self-esteem.  As children master their play world, they gain the confidence to face other challenges in the real world.
• Play encourages children to develop social skills, as they interact with inanimate objects, and later, other children.  They learn to share, negotiate, and empathize with others. 
• Play allows children to discover what their interests are and what they enjoy.  Eventually, they may discover passions they wish to pursue.
• Play builds active, healthy bodies and increases physical activity levels in children.
• When parents play with their children, parents and children learn to communicate better with one another and build their parent-child relationship.
• Play helps children with language development.  As children talk repeatedly during play, they enhance their language skills through repetition of words.
• Play is also important simply because it is how children experience fun and joy that should be a cherished part of childhood!

Don’t let play get lost amidst the business of school and other structured activities.  A child whose every moment is scheduled loses out on all of the ways that play contributes to development.