Freeplay and Resiliency

Last Spring I had two of my grandkids with me during a visit to the community where I spent my elementary and middle school years. I was prompted to take a trip down memory lane when right at noon, the fire whistle at the local volunteer fire department let out that familiar siren. I stopped dead in my tracks. “Did you hear that?” I asked the kids. “Yes”, they replied. “That’s the twelve-o’clock whistle, and there’s another one that will go off again at five pm.” During the 1960’s it was those regularly timed test whistles that my mother was talking about whenever she sent us out the door play, telling us to come home for lunch when you hear the twelve o’clock whistle, and home for dinner when you hear the five o’clock whistle. We were involved in what was called unsupervised and unstructured free play. Researchers now tell us that this is what builds resiliency and agency in kids. Parents, we help our kids when we pull back on the helicopter parenting.