Ep 130: Why freedom, independence and play is important for child development, and how overprotection can be harmful. With Peter Gray, neuroscientist and psychologist

Dr. Peter Gray, a neuroscientist and psychologist, discusses the importance of independence, freedom, and play in children's development. He challenges the cultural delusion of overprotection and highlights the low risks children face in the world today. Dr. Gray emphasizes the benefits of challenging and risky activities for children's growth and resilience. He argues that children are naturally curious and self-directed learners, and that parents should focus on fostering their independence rather than controlling their education. The conversation also delves into the role of media in children's lives and the need for a balanced approach. It emphasizes the importance of pediatricians in promoting independent play and providing resources for parents. 

Dr Jessica Hochman is a board certified pediatrician, mom to three children, and she is very passionate about the health and well being of children. Most of her educational videos are targeted towards general pediatric topics and presented in an easy to understand manner.

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The information presented in Ask Dr Jessica is for general educational purposes only. She does not diagnose medical conditions or formulate treatment plans for specific individuals. If you have a concern about your child's health, be sure to call your child's health care provider.

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Hi everybody I'm Dr. Jessica Hochman, paediatrician, and mom of three. On this podcast I like to talk about various paediatric health topics, sharing my knowledge not only as a doctor but also as a parent. Ultimately, my hope is that when it comes to your children's health, you feel more confident, worry less, and enjoy your parenting experience as much as possible. So you welcome back to ask Dr. Jessica, I'm your host and paediatrician Dr. Jessica Hochman. So as today's culture seems to be more over protective of our children, kids are also experiencing less freedom and independence. And I wonder how this may affect the overall well being and health of our children. So that being said, I couldn't feel more fortunate to talk about this topic with today's guest, Peter grey. Peter is a psychologist. He's an author, and he's a research professor. His research focuses on how children actually educate themselves through play and exploration. I recently discovered Peter grey after reading his paper published in the Journal of paediatrics, where he wrote about the importance of independent play. I've also read his book free to learn, and I highly recommend it. We'll talk about it more in this episode. A big thank you to Peter for taking the time to come on this podcast. I think the work that he does is really important, and I'm so happy to share his voice with you. And also, before we get started, if I may ask that you please rate review and subscribe to ask Dr. Jessica. And also please share this episode. All of this really helps support the podcast. And I thank you for helping to spread the word. So Dr. Grey, tell us your interests and what you did for work. I have been a neuroscientist and a psychologist, research psychologist for many, many years. For some period of time early on I was laboratory scientists studying the brains of rats and mice looking at how certain hormones are bind to certain areas of the brain and what effects they have certain motivated behaviours. But quite some years ago, really, it's many years ago at this point I, I've really changed my research field at first gradually to children's development. And so for the bulk of my career, actually, I have been studying children's development, it's especially interested in children's natural ways of learning and play and curiosity, and how that how we can lead that kind of learning by providing them the opportunities for, for play an exploration that allow them to learn in their natural ways. I am so interested in the work that you do and the work you've done and the book you wrote, because I think a lot about how I'm raising my children currently. And I wonder if I'm doing right by them, they go to school, they have activities after school, they're very busy. And I'm always thinking is this the right thing? Is this the way for the happiest childhood and then I read your article, and I have to tell you, it was really inspiring, I can have the confidence to know that if I give them some independence and some freedom that they will actually be okay without me pushing them. So they will be better without you push is my general conclusion I can't speak specifically for your children but children in general. So what has happen is what you're describing is really what has happened in our culture over the past few decades really. It used to be understood that children need independence you know, if you there's actually a book that analyse it looks at advice to parents, over the last 100 years advice to parents that was given in magazines for parents like Good Housekeeping, which has been published for over 100 years, parent magazine and so on. And up until about 1970 the advice was always your child should walk to school by themselves by the time they're five. If your child is hesitant about doing that, you need to encourage the child to do it. That's the kind of advice being given. Your child should be doing chores on their own. You shouldn't have to be reminding them all the time. Your child should be out there playing with other kids. This was the kind of advice given that there was fear that children would be too timid we needed to encourage them to be brave. Now we aren't allowing them to be brave or not not only are we not encouraging them to walk to school on their own, but we're not allowing them to and even those parents that do allow them to risk being arrested for doing so. You know what has happened to our society the world isn't any more dangerous than it was in a truly is that the crime rate is down compared to decades ago. The crimes that people are afraid of are almost non existent. I can't say completely non existent. They do exist but very, very rare. So this is a cultural delusion and it's a dual illusion that is harming our children. I'm quite convinced of that. That's what a lot of what I've been writing about lately. I love that you're talking about this because there's a culture where all parents I talked to are really obsessed with their kids being safe. And it's permeating everywhere. And I like what you're saying, because I want to remind myself that, yes, of course, there's always some risk and my kids doing things without my supervision. But there's a risk involved in not letting them do things. Exactly. I'm a big believer in safety. And but I think that we have to use common sense about what's safe and what's not safe. And our approach should be, instead of denying our children the opportunity to do things, let's teach them how to do them safely. So this was very common in the past. So I, I remember, my first experience with independent activity many, many years ago, I remember at four years old, we were living in a working class neighbourhood in downtown Minneapolis, busy street. And I remember my grandmother, who was the stay at home parent for me at that time, telling me that I was old enough now to go and buy things at the at the drugstore for her a two blocks away, and man crossing a busy street. And she told me how to cross streets, she walked with me, the first time I went told me all the ways lookbook even even if when the light changes still look both ways. At four years old, children can understand this, these kinds of things. And then after that I could go and do errands for at age four. So instead of saying, Oh, this is too dangerous, she said, as did most parents at that time, not necessarily at four, but maybe by five or six, would teach them how to be safe outdoors. So that that's part of it. The other part of it is just as you said, let's think long term about safety. Today, the number of children who are killed by suicide who die by suicide, because they have decided life isn't worth living greatly outnumbers the number who are kidnapped on the street or die from actually outnumbers the number who who died from an accident, if you take away automobile accidents, where they are in the car, not where they're outside of the car being hit by an automobile, whether you're in the car, and the car crashes, that's still a big cause of death that's gone down because cars have gotten safer. But that's still because very rare that children are killed by being hit by car is very rare that children are being killed by strangers on the street, and so on. It's not that it doesn't happen. But but when it does happen, it's not generally because children are out there playing or exploring or doing those kinds of things. We do, of course, have school shooting, and that's a terrible thing. We need to take precautions about that kind of thing. But the fear that people have, that their child will be somehow that some stranger on the street is going to snatch their child away. The truth of the matter is strangers don't want your child that once children are snatched away, they are snatched away, not by strangers on the street, they're snatched away most often by relatives, by your ex spouse, by a grandparent who thinks you're not raising the child correctly. By by those kinds of thing. When children are molested. It's more often by somebody you know very well, it's the priest or the teacher, or the coach or a trusted uncle, or, you know, somebody said tongue in cheek. And I have to say it is kind of tongue in cheek that your child is safer on the street than at home or in church or at school, or are they in the locker room at the gym. We have a dog and I let our children walk our dog around the neighbourhood. And it's interesting because my parents and my have both sets of grandparents, you know, my parents and my mom and my husband's mom, they both discourage our kids walking the dog by themselves. They want an adult to be there to supervise them. And the truth is, when my kids do walk the dog by themselves, they feel really good about themselves. They come back smiling, they had a good time. There's a sense of accomplishment when they do things on their own. So I agree with you that we were overthinking safety to the detriment of our kids while being exactly and it's not surprising, the children feel good when they do something on their own. And especially if it's something that's a little challenging in some way, even if it's something that's a little scary to them. So they've done this thing, and they they come back feeling I did that I did that I felt a little frightened, but I did it. That's growing up. That's what children are desert, you know, the whole purpose of childhood is to grow up the whole purpose of childhood is to become increasingly independent. So it's not surprising, therefore, that children feel this sense of pleasure and accomplishment whenever they do something that's a little challenging a little new to them. And they do it, whether it's climbing a tree, you know, I climb that tree. And I came, and I felt some fear, right, climb that tree, but I did it, I came down, I lived to tell the tale. There's nothing that makes a child feel better about themselves and something like it's true. And I tried to tell parents because I do talk as a paediatrician, I talk to parents, often, who are afraid of their kids falling and injuring themselves. But I explained that kids are made of rubber, usually our fall, they bounce back. And if they don't, and let's say worst case scenario, they get a fracture. It's amazing how quickly they bounce back is the truth, as a really good point, and you can say that, as a physician, I, I'm often telling people, you know, if your five year old falls and breaks and breaks an arm or your even your 12 year old, you know, it'll heal up in six weeks, if I fell and broke, it would take years. So I've got to be careful climbing trees. That's the beauty of children, it's the time for them to explore and to climb trees and to live life a little bit risky. So some people are afraid Well, if you're if the child has some kind of an accident, so they fall out of a tree, or they are they almost drowned while swimming, but somebody saves, there's actually research that shows it does not have that effect, they don't become terribly afraid of the water after scary incident in the water, they don't become terribly afraid of climbing just because they fell and hurt themselves. One time the worst thing if a child has a kind of phobia, a fear of heights, a fear of water, a fear that the worst thing is for them not to ever be exposed to the thing that they're afraid of one thing we know is the way you overcome fears is not by avoiding the fear thing, it's by confronting the fear thing. That's the old story, you know, if you fall off the horse, get back on it again, you know, so we, when we're protecting children, we are preventing them from from overcoming whatever fears and phobias they may have. And it's one of the reasons that we've got such high rates of fears and phobias among young people today, because we're not allowing them to expose themselves in a gradual way to the things that they're frightened of. I finished your book this week. And I want to tell you that one of the themes that I that gave me a lot to think about was how you talk about how kids really don't need their parents how and much of what they do, yes, we should be around and we should be carrying figures in their life, but they don't really need us as much as I would have thought to learn. Exactly, well, the message that parents keep getting more so with every decade is how much parents are supposed to be involved with their kids, you know, you're supposed to be talking to your baby, before it's born. They're supposed to be, you know, playing classical music or whatever you're supposed to be maybe some certain number of words every day to your child at a certain age, you're supposed to be a teacher to your child. You know, it wasn't that many decades ago, where what a parent was supposed to do is make sure the child is fed and clothed to be a comfort to the child, you know, love the child. Now, you're supposed to be a teacher to your child. And I think that's a big mistake that changes the parent child relationship. That doesn't mean you wouldn't explain things I already said teach your child to be safe crossing the street, there are certain things that it's important to. But the idea that your child's education in a general sense is in your hands, or even in teachers hands at the school. I have come to the conclusion this is probably the most counterintuitive for many people today of my messages is that children really are designed to educate themselves. They come into the world biologically designed to educate themselves. They are so curious about everything around them, they want to explore everything. You can't stop them from learning unless you lock them in a closet. This is why you have to baby proof your house because the baby wants to the child and the toddler wants to get into everything. Why? Because they want to know that what would happen if I dropped this vase on the floor? What would happen if I stuck a bobby pin in this electric outlet? You know, they're so curious. They're constantly exploring and experimenting. They are learning all the time. They're paying a special attention to other people. That's how they learn language. We never teach children our language they learn it on their own native language, they're paying attention. They're paying attention. You are affecting your child much more by what you do than by what you say you can give all the advice and lecturing and you want but your child is learning by watching you by overhearing you in your conversations with other people. And when and, and the child is doing that even maybe more significantly. So when playing with other children, as the child gets a little bit older and is playing with other children, the enormous amount of learning comes through play with other children. So the way I think of it is there's there's two primary instincts for education. One is curiosity. And that's children want to know things they want to understand the world around them. And as they get older, the world gets broader for them as they can explore more and more of the world. And that's how they acquire information. That's how they learn what's out there. What can I do with it. And the other thing, the other part of education is learning skills and play. The purpose of play is to acquire skills play is doing things. Children play at various things. And in their play, they exercise their hands, and they exercise the parts of their mind. They play at building things. They play socially, and they learn social skills. By doing that they play with emotion. They play in ways that they get anger and angry with their playmates. And they overcome anger. As long as there's no parent there to solve the problem. They have to figure out how to overcome anger themselves. They play climbing trees and fearful things. They learn how to deal with fear, they're learning all kinds of skills in their play. I think you're right, that of all your points. That was the point I had to think about the most was that kids really do learn their most not from teachers, not from parents, but from other children. Exactly. I think this has become more and more true, as our schools have changed over time, so that they're taking more and more of children's time. I mean, it used to be that. So like when I was in elementary school, the 1950s school was not anything like the big deal. It is today, the hours, the school year was five weeks shorter than it is today. The we had, we'd never had homework in elementary school. We had. So when we were out of school, we were out of school. Moreover, at least at the school, I went to and fifth and sixth grade at that time, sixth grade was still part of elementary school. We had six hour school days, which is still pretty much true for many schools today. But two of those hours were outdoors, we had an hour full our full hour of lunch, the lunch hour was actually an hour. And most people some people went home for lunch. But most of us stayed around and played we brought a bag lunch, ate it and five minutes and spent the rest of the time playing the end, we had a half hour recess in the middle of the morning in the middle of the afternoon. So that's two hours out of the six hour school day we were outdoors playing there was a kind of understanding that show that play is important that children's lives. Now we think that for the sake of quote, learning, we need to shorten their recesses, we don't give them an hour of lunch. We don't allow them outside during lunch. We add we and we give them homework and then we encourage parents basically to be assistant teachers, because parents are now supposed to grade the homework and are or monitor the homework make sure that child has done it you will be blamed as a parent if your child doesn't do they're over. It used to be that was you know, once you had homework and middle school, what's now called middle school or high school that is the kids it's the kids responsibility, not the parents responsibility to do the homework if they're going to do it. The job of becoming a parent has become let me just repeat that has become a job. And it shouldn't be a job. So the we have come to think of parenting. You know this word parenting, which actually wasn't even a word in the 1950s You were a parent, but you weren't parenting. We think of parenting now as a job as an occupation. We think of it as a profession homos, you know, this is this is how you prove yourself by how well you parent, your child. And then the measure of your parenting is how well your child is doing in this world. What a burden you're putting on your child first of all, when you think of it that way. So this is this is a real, real change in attitude that a much better approach would be to think of, you know, being a PA era is a relationship, you have a relationship with this person who has entered your home. This is a person who starts off being helpless, you've got to help this child. So no question you there's a there's some work to be done there but, but you love this creature scattered your home. And you undertake the the, to the degree that's that when the child needs to be fed, the child needs to be comforted. The child needs your love, you provide all of those things. But as the child grows older, the important thing is to is that now the child needs to do and wants to do more and more things by themselves. And that's when the parents need to back off. And so I think I think this idea that parenting is a job that we evaluate that an important that an important idea to overcome, I think for most parents is that your child is going to be who your child is, regardless of you, and your child is not you, your child is not you know, your child, your son, even genetically your child is some mix of your genes and, and the other parents genes, a whole new person. And your job as a parent, if it is a job is to just understand who this person is and help this person be who they want to be. Your it's not to try to make them be something that you want them to be. That puts a burden on yourself and on the child that causes distress. What you're saying resonates with me so much, because when I feel like my kids need my help academically, for example, if I have to teach them how to spell certain words, or reinforce certain things they are required to learn in school, those are my least favourite moments with them. But the times I enjoy the most are when we have an adventure together, we take a walk we try new restaurant, when we're actually experiencing and enjoying one another's company. Those are my favourite times to parent, not the work that schools make me feel like I have to do with my kids. Yeah, I know that may sound obvious, but it's really true. Right, right. Yeah. I mean, my my advice, actually, when the child says, Will you help me with my homework? And would be, well, why can't you look up that work? It's pretty easy to look up stuff these days, right? You don't turn the responsibility back to them whenever you can. It's important that children learn to take responsibility for whatever they're doing. I'm not a big advocate of schoolwork. I'm against schoolwork. But if there has to be schoolwork, it's the child's it's not the parents job to do it. And no, and I appreciate you saying this because you're relieving my guilt. Because the truth is, I hardly spend much time at all with my kids on their homework, I do encourage them to do it on their own. But sometimes I feel badly because my son will tell me Oh, I'm not the best. I'm not the best speller, or my daughter will tell me, I'm not the best at math. And I'm thinking should I be investing more time to help them but they're not asking for help? Yeah, I think the right thing to say is Oh, that's fine. Only one person can be the best at it anyway. That's why I was a terrible speller. I still am thank God for spellcheck. You can't be good at everything you talked about in your book. The key is to help your kids find their passions and then let them explore their passions and help them flourish and what they truly find interesting and curious. Right. Now, I want to talk about the paper that you recently published. This is actually how I found out about you I read this beautiful article in the Journal of paediatrics, and I noticed that in your paper, you said you purposely published it in the Journal of Paediatrics. So I'd love for you to talk about a talk about that paper and explain how can a paediatrician like myself pass on this message? How can we help? Great, I'm glad you I'm glad you asked that the. So I have I have for many years been writing and talking about the importance of independent play and independent activities for children presenting evidence based on other people's studies that I've brought together that multiple lines of evidence that children that the primary reason that children are suffering today from anxiety and depression and the primary reason we have such high rates of youth suicide is not social media and the primary reason because actually these all began to occur Well, before we even had social media. We were already on this trajectory of great increases in anxiety and depression. You know, By the beginning of the 20th century of the 21st century, rather, the rate of suicide among among school aged children was already five times what it was in the 1950s. By best estimates, the rates of anxiety and depression at clinically significant levels was already way higher than, than it was in 1950, something like eight times this high, depending on how you'd make the estimate. So this had already been occurring before we had iPhones and social media and all of this. And what was occurring over this period of time, what clearly was occurring is it really beginning in 1970s, accelerating in the 1980s, we had increasing restrictions on children's freedom to engage in independent activities. There were several things that happened in the 1980s that I think causes that to be the decade of the greatest change in what children's life was like that if you were a child before the 1980s, it's quite likely you did walk to school by yourself, it's quite likely that you did go out and play in the park with other kids, it's quite likely that you have these growing experiences, beginning in the 1880s, beginning a little bit before that to some degree, but really accelerating in the 1980s. These were taken away from children. And, and so I've been writing about this and I've been getting, talking about how, why it is that this would occur what what the relationship is between independent activity and mental health that you have to first of all, play, all by itself makes children happy, independent play. And as we talked about earlier, in our discussion here, doing things yourself independently that are a little scary, makes you happy, gives you confidence allows you to face the bumps in the road of life with confidence. These things seem obvious to me, but they apparently are not obvious to many people or they don't think about them. And so I was frustrated that I've been writing about this. And the world doesn't seem to be catching up. And so my wife who's an OB GYN kept telling me, you know, if if you're going to get the message out, you need to reach paediatricians so so she said, Well, you know, parents listen to their paediatrician and, and kids even on into their adolescence, go to the paediatrician. And so if if paediatricians understand the message, and paediatricians can start talking with parents about it, maybe that will begin to change things. And so, at first I thought I kept angling, I kept thinking, Well, can I get some paediatrician to invite me to talk to a major paediatrics conference and nothing seemed to work out there? I get called Pac and all kinds of other conferences but not the nutrition conferences. So So finally I thought, well, let me write let me publish an article in a in a paediatrics journal, maybe that will do it. And I got these my two colleagues, both of whom are very esteemed researchers. One of them is David Lancey is probably the world's expert on children worldwide. He's an anthropologist who studied children all over the world. He's written books about the nature of childhood based on cross cultural studies. The other day is David Darklands, who's very prominent of cognitive developmental psychologists. And so I thought, you know, the three of us, maybe paediatricians will listen will pay attention to this article. So, so we wrote the so we wrote the article. And, and I have to say that I can't say that so far, I have any evidence that it's affecting what paediatricians are doing in their offices. But there's been a lot of response to it. And I'm on many podcasts because of it all. And I've been interviewed for many radio programmes and television programmes and newspaper articles and so on and so forth. The next step, I have to tell you where I'm currently along with Lenore skinnies. She wrote the book free range kids and she and I and a couple of other people started a nonprofit called that grow where which really is to aimed out at helping parents and schools understand that children need independent activity. And we've been have some success working with schools. So working with Lenore and also with Tony Christopher, who is the the executive director of an organisation called the National Institute for Play. We're now really developing a set of resources that we hope to get to paediatricians on this, there will be follow ups of this article one of them. So when I go to a doctor's office, there'll be brochures in the, in the waiting room. And I and we're right now we're creating a brochure about the importance of independent activity that's directed towards parents, but also towards paediatricians. And it provides kind of a summary of what children learn, it's a nice and bright, easy to read, handout about why children need independent activity and independent play in order to develop well. Our hope is that paediatricians will begin not only to have that in their waiting room, but to use it as a basis for some discussion with parents looking at this brochure, you can see that, you know, it's really important to be doing things, even things that are kind of scary to do and your other ways that you could be doing things like that, that wouldn't be too dangerous. But we don't want you to do things that are really dangerous, but things that are a little bit scary, that's helpful. Have that kind of a discussion, in relationship to the individual where the parents are, you're, you're being very respectful to the parents, the parents are taking you're, you're asking the parents, what are the realistic dangers in your neighbourhood? Of course, we we need to be careful about the realistic dangers. But given the neighbourhood you live in, given what you know about your child, are there things your child could be doing on their own, that they're not doing now? Are there opportunities for play with other children that maybe could be arranged to be occurring to have that kind of a discussion? That would be my dream? I think that's a brilliant idea that encouraging us to have conversations with parents so that we can brainstorm ways to allow their children to play more independently. Exactly. So this is really helpful I, I want to close with, do you have any kid directed activities that you would recommend parents to think about when they're when they're home with their kids? Well, I think the primary the primary thing is to think is, is to have a discussion with your kit. It's not really the parents who should decide what these activities are as the kid who should decide, have a discussion with the kid. So is there are what would you like to do that? For one reason or another? You haven't done? And maybe the reason is because you think I wouldn't allow it. Something that you would do yourself something that would be new that you haven't maybe you haven't done before, as might be even something that's a little scary to you? What might you like to do in that sense? I think that would be the way to begin it. And so the child says, Well, you know, I actually would really like to be able to walk all by myself over to my friend's house, rather than have you walk with me or I would, I actually feel I could wait for the school bus myself with you standing there next to me, I would actually feel a little more comfortable that way. Maybe that would be what they would say. We actually have some experience with this. They let grow, we work with schools to promote a number of opportunities for more independent activities. And one of the things we do is encourage teachers to give this actually as an assignment. So teachers will give an assignment to their to the children in their class, to go home and initiate this discussion with their parents that you have. It's called the let draw assignment. And so the kid goes home to their parent. And they said, say, so I've got this assignment. The genius of this, this is the school assignment. So the parent has to take it seriously. So so the kid says, I've got this assignment, I need to do something that I haven't done before, by myself. That's a little bit scary to me, but possibly, but I need to get your permission on it. I can't just go and do something that you don't have permission on that wouldn't be acceptable to the school. And so, so here's what I would like to do, and, and can I do it, and then that leads to some, oftentimes to some negotiation between the parent and child what the child wants to do. Maybe the parent says, no, no, that would be too frightening. I can't allow you to do that. But they arrive at some compromise and then the child actually does that. The child feels good about doing that the parent field sees how good the child feels. And what's interesting is the parent feels better. The parent feels is proud that I allowed my child to do that, and my child did it, and did it well survive the experience, and that breaks this cycle of restraint, now the parent is a little bit more open to allowing the child to do even more. So that that's the way I would encourage parents to, if the school isn't initiating it, the parent might initiate it just, you know, what would you like to do that you haven't done before them. So that's one thing and the other thing. And it's not, you know, it used to be, certainly when I was a kid, and even when my own son was a kid in the 1970s, you could send a kid outdoors, and there would be other kids outdoors. So there were lots of kids to play with and play independent of adults was just a natural part of the world. It's no longer that. So now it takes some kind of initiative. And sometimes parents have to figure out a way to arrange that. And so one of the there's several things that I encourage parents to do to enable independent child play. One of them is to get to know the other parents in your neighbourhood who have kids, to talk with them. You remember playing and the value of play with other kids, get them interested in the idea of play, and then say, so now, you know, our kids are indoors all the time. And if any, they're not getting outdoors to play there, they don't even know the other kids in the neighbourhood. You know, wouldn't it be good if we could do something maybe like old fashioned parents did, let's all at certain times, maybe every Saturday afternoon, and maybe Fridays after school, let's pick certain types, and we're all going to send our kids out. We're just going to shoot them outdoors, get out of the house. And if some of the parents are a little worried that it might be dangerous, all right, we'll have one of us be out there. Or maybe ideally, it would be a grandparent being out there, who's just there for safety, but no other reason not there to tell the kids how to play not there to solve little quarrels, not there to worry about scraped knees, but just to be there for real emergencies. And, and let's do that, and, and there are a few named not very many, but there are some neighbourhoods that I know have done this, and it works well when they do it. And the kids get to know one another. And pretty soon after a while the parents feel more comfortable. The kids just getting together to play even without this formal time for doing it. Yes, no. And I and I'm sure you know, honestly, I'm sure parents. If we lean into something like this parents will appreciate the break time kids will appreciate the freedom, the time for independence. So it's a win win for everybody, especially if we can get past our exaggerated fears of safety. So it's very helpful to hear from you. I appreciate all of your advice. And I look forward to spreading the word about let grow to my other paediatricians and passing on this message to my fellow paediatrician colleagues. So thank you so much. Thank you, Jessica. If you hear from other paediatricians who might be interested, or if you can collect such people, I will. You could send me there. Once we've got this brochure. Ready else, we'll send out batches of them to those people. Sounds forward to it. Thank you for listening and I hope you enjoyed this week's episode of Ask Dr. Jessica. Also, if you could take a moment and leave a five star review wherever it is you listen to podcasts, I would greatly appreciate it. It really makes a difference to help this podcast grow. You can also follow me on Instagram at ask Dr. Jessica See you next Monday.