Ashok Sharma
Childhood is the most important time of one’s life as it is during this time that our habit formation takes place and our attitudes and aptitudes are developed. So it is essential that children at this stage are involved in proper play activities to ensure their holistic development in cognitive, socio-emotional and physical spheres. It is usually at this stage that children involve themselves in various playway activities to satisfy their need for social, physical and intellectual development.They play indoor and outdoor games to develop their social skills and learn a lot by doing.But in the mad race for competition and modernity, children are not given exposure to the activities.Children these days are admitted usually at the age of two to three years in Pre nursery/nursery with little time for play. Gone are the days when children would be admitted at the age of five or six and they were allowed to be coached and taken care of by multitude of relatives including their grandfathers, uncles, aunts, besides their parents.They were allowed to play with clay, build sand houses,play in the rain,splash in poodles, accompany their grandparents wherever they went and learnt the valuable interpersonal skills and living together while doing all these activities.Even becoming angry with eachother and then restarting friendship used to be a fun activity with the fingers performing the function of ending relationship or starting it all over again after a scuffle.
There were no mobile phones,video/computer games etc.to encroach on their valuable time.Children in the early stages would play the games of marble, gillidanda,chor-sipahi, hide and seek, spotting friends by being blindfolded,making others ‘statue’, spotting the middle finger in the closed fist, bending the wrist of other on the table to test strength, skipping the ropes and the like.During rainy season, they would make paper boats to float on small pools of water.They would also make wooden tyres and drive one another on an improvised seat.Their creative skills would also find outlet in making spinning wheel from cactus and placing it under a small waterfall where it would continue to spin till the water stopped or it was disturbed by somebody.As they grew up, they would play santolia, stapoo, kho kho ,kabaddi,learn to climb trees and make paper toys such as paper purse, paper planes etc.
The girls would be encouraged by their mothers to make bouquets, mats, baskets, bags etc from crop straw and palm ( khajoor) leaves.It would serve twin purposes-on the one hand these activities would enhance their skills and keep themselves busy and on the other, a sense of responsibility, concentration,confidence and pride would develop in them while helping their parents and contributing something to the family work. Both these things are lacking in the modern children as they are overpampered by their parents. Children would also learn from their elders as to how to guess the time of the day from the shadow of a distant wall or tree. They would spot and identify the names of animals, birds,plants, insects, rodents, butterflies etc and search for eggs in the nests of different birds and in this way their curiosity would be developed. They would learn as to how to climb and swing on trees and swim in small pools and streams.By continuous practice, these children would become adept and trained in the art of of climbing trees and swimming, which could help them in survival skills in times of emergency.
But the overprotective parents of these days don’t let their children play with clay/mud or bathe in streams lest they should fall ill.The children would swing on the branches of the trees playfully, especially on or around Janamashtmi falling and rising , plucking leaves and cutting twigs to make small houses.In this way creative and novel ideas would come to their minds naturally.Even at home, in the abscence of mobile phones and TV, having sufficient time at their disposal,the members of the family would play games such as snake and ladder, carrom, antakshri etc.Children would be encouraged to learn as to how to sow seeds and plant saplings.Girls used to play pajjekre/geetian and play kokalashi placing a hankerchief behind one of the players and chanting ‘kolda shupake jummeraat aayee hai, jera agein pishe dikha odi shamat aayi hai’.Even at dusk children would enjoy nature watching moon and counting shooting stars while sitting/lying on the cots under the open sky in the verandah.They would also compete in spoting first and counting bats moving towards the valley of Kashmir in search of fruitand other food.Sometimes, they would do reverse counting or reverse speaking of words and asking the other participants as to identify which sentence the speaker spoke.Even while going to bed, parents and grandparents would ask/teach them riddles or tell them stories of noble and great kings, beautiful queens,handsome and brave princes and pretty princesses and fairies, putting them to a sound and refreshing sleep.
So these funny and playway activities would add charm to their life and teach them valuable lessons of life, such as self discipline and help them in enhancing their cognitive abilities, creativity, problem solving ability, concentration etc. which would stand them in good stead in the coming days and cope up with stress and tension in their life.But alas in the fast and hectic modern life, these activities are fast vanishing with the result that children are lacking useful social skills and becoming more and more self centered. Children are being nurtured in closed doors with a lot of electronic paraphernalia including mobile phones, ipads, computers, laptops etc.They are always busy in browsing their phones or texting messages, unaware of what is happening outside.
They are unaware of the fact that they are missing out the finest experiences of their life.Computer and laptops have, in fact, locked their door to outdoor activities and they spend most of their spare time indoors.With children spending more and more time watching TV, browsing phone or playing computer games, obesity in children is on the rise and with physical activity being reduced considerably everyday, we may be having the entire generation faced with the problems of obesity, cardiac disorders, High B.P., Hypertension as they grow up.So it is the duty of the parents and grandparents to involve children more and more in outdoor games and physical activities and motivate them to have a rendezvous with Nature quite often,after all, their sweetest memories and most enjoyable joys, as they grow up, would not be those derived from browsing phone and playing computer games but these will, invariably be from the outdoor activities which they might have pursued in their childhood.
(The writer is serving as lecturer in English in HSS (Boys) Udhampur)
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