Podcast 490: The mental health benefits of unstructured play for young children

The Dr. Leaf Show

Dr. Caroline Leaf

Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.7 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 12 June 2023

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Pre-order my new book HOW TO HELP YOUR CHILD CLEAN UP THEIR MENTAL MESS here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.mentallyresilientkids.com/⁠⁠⁠ +Pre-order before August 8 to get access to bonus content! SHOW DESCRIPTION: In this podcast I talk about how less free, unstructured playtime affects children’s mental health, and what we can do to improve our children’s mental resilience through encouraging free play. This is part of my summer series on brain-building activities you can do with your children to help them build up their mental resilience and manage their mental health while having fun. Read the blog here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://drleaf.com/blogs/news/the-mental-health-benefits-of-unstructured-play-for-young-children Sign up to Patreon to get access to full AD-FREE episodes, exclusive downloads, live Q&As, and more: https://www.patreon.com/drcarolineleaf OFFERS FROM OUR SPONSORS: -BiOptimizer’s Magnesium Breakthrough: EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: 1:50 What free play is & why it is important 6:00 How keeping our children busy affects their wellbeing & growth 11:00 Ways to encourage free play 14:20 What happens when you schedule every moment of your child’s day 17:25 The importance of encouraging balance in your child’s life 22:32 Why we need to change the way we understand setting our child up for success 26:10, 31:44 How to incorporate more free play in your child’s day 39:20 Why we shouldn’t just focus on our child’s academic achievement ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: -Get my new book Cleaning up Your Mental Mess here: https://www.cleaningupyourmentalmess.com -Get a free Cleaning up Your Mental Mess workbook when you subscribe to my weekly email at drleaf.com! - Visit my website at https://drleaf.com for more free resources -Instagram: @drcarolineleaf: https://www.instagram.com/drcarolineleaf/- -Facebook: Dr. Caroline Leaf: https://www.facebook.com/drleaf -Twitter: @drcarolineleaf: https://twitter.com/DrCarolineLeaf -Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/drcarolineleaf *DISCLAIMER: This podcast and blog are for educational purposes only and are not intended as medical advice. We always encourage each person to make the decision that seems best for their situation with the guidance of a medical professional. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Dr Caroline Leif and welcome to my podcast, Cleaning Up the Mental Mass.
0:10.6	In this podcast, I'm going to be talking about how more work and less free play is affecting
0:16.6	children's mental health.
0:18.8	We know that there's a lot of issues with mental health and this is why I'm doing this whole
0:22.0	series over this time period and for the summer vacation to give you things to really work
0:27.3	on over summer to help with your children's mental health.
0:30.2	And all of this information I've got in my latest book coming out on the 8th of August
0:34.6	called Heart to Hope Your Child Clean Up their Mental Mass, a guide to building resilience
0:38.6	and managing mental health.
0:40.5	And this is on pre-audit at the moment you can pre-audit in the link in the show notes
0:45.0	and there's a lot of great pre-audit bonuses and I'll tell you about those at the end.
0:48.4	But essentially, I want to talk to you about the importance of free play and house,
0:53.7	society's change, how we become so work focused that we don't allow our children to free
0:57.9	play enough.
0:59.2	So I'm going to do this in three ways because it's quite a lot of information I'm going
1:05.5	to give you.
1:06.5	I'm going to give you the definition of free play, even though you probably know what it
1:09.5	is.
1:10.5	I'm going to specify and spell it out so that we actually do this with our children.
1:14.3	I'm going to give you some research into the importance of why free play is so important
1:18.8	as part of your children's life and then I'm going to give you some tips.
1:22.6	I'm going to encourage you to subscribe to my email list if you haven't already so
	...

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