Parental Attitude and The Extent of Outdoor Play Among Children

Abstract

'Play' has a prominent role in the development of a child. Children explore their surroundings and start to learna lot through their play. However,nowadays children recede from playing, especially from playing outdoors. Their leisure time is cut down, and their play activities have been restricted to indoor most of the time. Parents, teachers, school authorities, and even many health professionals are not aware of the beneficial impact of outdoor play. Often, they consider playing as an unproductive and meaningless activity. But the role of 'play' in a child's emotional and social developmentis still an exciting area of research in the field ofdevelopmental psychology. Here, the investigators try to study the parental attitudes towards outdoor play and understand its contribution in determining the duration of outdoor play their children have. The participants were 750 children from the fifthgrade to ninthgrade,including girls and boys from different schools in Kerala, India. Quantitative statistical methods were used to find the results, and the results will be detailed in thepaper. By understanding the attitude of parents and its influence on outdoor play, we can make parents more aware of the value of play so that it will be an eye-opener for many parentswho don't permit children to play