FRIDAYS WITH FRANKY! Kids Learn Resilience Through Playing!

Hey everyone, it’s me Franky, the WeHaKee camp dog.  Playing around is one of my most favorite things to do!   Sure, I like to go for walks and car rides, but they are kind of restricting, you know with the leashes and car doors and stuff!   There’s just nothing like running and jumping with no particular reason for doing it.   It seems I’m not much different than most kids either.   With some sticks, a big open field, maybe a rock or even a box, kids can create a world unmatched by any electronic device or gadget.   Adults like to call it free play and it’s something that makes many of them quite anxious! We just call it FUN!

Seems like some adults are beginning to see it as something that’s really good for kids.   The creativity and problem solving that occurs within free play can help kids develop resiliency and that can lead to success later in life. Katrina Schwartz* recently posted in Mind/Shift some of her examinations of the findings that Kenneth Ginsburg shared in his book, Building Resilience in Children and Teens.

“So many of the things that we care about are completely learned through the creative process,”
Author, Kenneth Ginsburg

In his book, Ginsburg provides what Schwartz refers to as a “road map to for helping students find their inner grit”.   She is refering to Ginsburg’s 7 C’s of Resilience:

• COMPETENCE: Young people need to be recognized when they’re doing something right and to be given opportunities to develop specific skills.
• CONFIDENCE: Confidence comes from building real skills that parents and educators can teach and nurture. Confidence can be easily undermined, but also bolstered by tasks that push learners without making the goal feel unachievable.
• CONNECTION: Being part of a community helps kids know they aren’t alone if they struggle and that they can develop creative solutions to problems.
• CHARACTER. Kids need an understanding of right and what wrong and the capacity to follow a moral compass. That will allow them see that they cannot be put down.
• CONTRIBUTION: The experience of offering their own service makes it easier for young people to ask for help when they need it. Once kids understand how good it can feel to give to others, it becomes easier to ask for that same support when it’s needed. And being willing to ask for help is a big part of being resilient.
• COPING: Kids need to learn mechanisms to manage their stress by learning methods to both engage and disengage at times. Some strategies for doing this include breaking down seemingly insurmountable problems into smaller, achievable pieces, avoiding things that trigger extreme anxiety, and just letting some things go. After all, resilience is about conserving energy to fit the long game and kids need to know realistically what they can affect and what should be let go.
• CONTROL: In order to truly be resilient a child need to believe that she has control over her world. Feeling secure helps engender control, which is why kids test limits.

Now it seems to me that our campers at WeHaKee have ample and frequent opportunities to enhance these attributes as they try new things and discover new skills, as they meet new friends who may be different from them, as they learn to work independently within a community of others, and in so many other ways at camp.   And free play is a big part of the camp experience everyday.   Campers are able to explore, create, test the limits and boundaries in healthy and safe ways.   But they seldom see how this is helping them grow and develop. Probably because they are having way too much fun to worry about all that! Well, thanks for joining me today.   Have a great weekend!

* Read the entire article How Free Play Can Define Kids’ Success by Katrina Schwartz