Children who spend more time playing outdoors between the ages of two and four may be less likely to develop emotional and behavioural difficulties later in childhood.
That's according to new research led by the University of Exeter, published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Previous studies have shown a link between outdoor play and children's mental health, but this is the first study to explore how outdoor play in the early years relates to children's mental health over time.
Most children have low levels of mental health difficulties that stay low across childhood, but some increasingly experience difficulties with their mental health and others have difficulties from an early age. These new findings suggest the more often children play outdoors as preschoolers, the more likely it is that their mental health problems will be low through to middle childhood (aged eight).
Researchers analysed data from 4,151 children from the Growing Up in Scotland cohort dataset and looked at symptoms of mental health when children were aged four, five, six, and eight years old. This included externalising symptoms – which are problem behaviours such as aggression, impulsivity and hyperactivity – and internalising symptoms such as anxiety and depression.
The research found those who played outdoors more frequently at ages two, three and four were more likely to remain in a low-symptom, good mental health group through to middle childhood. Specifically, the results showed that for each additional day that a child plays outdoors in a typical week during the preschool years, the odds of that child having a healthy profile of mental health symptoms through to age eight increases by between six and 14 per cent.
Professor Helen Dodd from the University of Exeter led the study and said: "Our findings suggest that providing young children with more opportunities to play outside could be a simple, low-cost way to support better mental health and should be considered within public health, education and planning policies. This includes providing adequate funding for the provision and maintenance of playgrounds and protection for the range of spaces that children and families use for play, which include informal spaces close to home, parks and other green spaces. These public spaces are especially important for people without access to a garden."
To isolate the effect of outdoor play, the researchers controlled for a range of other related variables including child sex, ethnicity, highest education level within household, number of physical conditions that the child experiences, working status of parents, and whether the family had access to a park within ten minutes of home and/or access to a garden.
Marguerite Hunter Blair OBE, chair of the UK Children's Play Policy Forum, welcomed the study and said: "These findings clearly demonstrate the importance of play-based early interventions that can have a long-lasting positive impact on preschool children's mental health. This evidence shows that our young children will benefit significantly from more play opportunities and better spaces to play. To support this, governments and local authorities must build outdoor play into key policies and work with communities to create and improve these essential play spaces."
The paper titled 'Early Outdoor Play Predicts Trajectories of Child Mental Health in a Population-Based Cohort' is published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
