Step into an Indian neighborhood today and you may find the playgrounds eerily quiet. The same lanes that once echoed with cricket matches, hide-and-seek, and shouts of “one more over” are now mostly silent. Children are indoors, buried under tuition schedules or staring at screens. Parents say, “There’s no time, we need to focus on studies,” but the truth is, something precious is slipping away. The art of unstructured play, once a natural part of growing up, is slowly vanishing.
It is not a small loss. Play is not just fun—it is the training ground for life. A group of children figuring out rules of a new game is practicing negotiation and teamwork. A child building a sandcastle is learning problem-solving and patience. When a fight breaks out in gilli-danda and children resolve it themselves, they are learning conflict resolution better than any moral science textbook could ever teach. These are not extracurricular benefits. They are foundational skills.
In the rush to load children with structured activities—math tuition, coding classes, piano lessons—we have mistaken busyness for growth. The irony is that many of the qualities we admire in successful adults—creativity, adaptability, resilience—are forged in those long, unstructured hours of play. A child who invents a game with friends learns to think outside the box. A child who loses repeatedly in a neighborhood cricket match learns resilience. When children don’t get this time, they may grow up excellent at memorization but poor at managing life’s unpredictability.
“Unstructured play is not a luxury for children. It is as essential to their development as food and sleep.”
I often think of my own childhood evenings, where homework was balanced with long hours of outdoor play. We made up games, we argued, we reconciled. No adult intervened unless absolutely necessary. Compare that with what I see today—parents chauffeuring children from one class to another, proudly announcing that their child has no free time. It almost feels like a badge of honor: “She is so busy, always learning something.” But is she learning how to simply be with herself? Is she learning to manage boredom, to self-direct, to create?
A friend of mine recently shared a small anecdote. Her son, who is in Class 5, had half an hour free before dinner. Instead of picking up a gadget, he began arranging sofa cushions into a “fort.” Soon, he had created an entire world of knights and castles. It looked silly to adults, but the child was completely absorbed. Later, when he was given a creative writing assignment in school, he produced a vivid, imaginative story. His teacher was impressed. My friend smiled and told me, “That story began with those cushions.” It reminded me how directly unstructured play feeds into imagination.
There is also a darker side to the disappearance of play. Studies in India have shown that children are reporting higher stress levels and lower attention spans than before. A 2019 survey by ASSOCHAM indicated that nearly 68% of school-going children in metros face some form of stress linked to studies. While multiple factors contribute, one clear reason is the lack of release. Play is a natural stress-buster. When denied, children internalize stress, which shows up as irritability, anxiety, or lack of focus.
Parents sometimes argue that times have changed. It’s no longer safe for children to roam freely or play outdoors unsupervised. That may be true in parts of urban India, but play does not need to disappear; it can adapt. A group of children playing carrom in a building lobby, siblings creating their own puppet show, or cousins inventing games with everyday objects—all count as unstructured play. The key is that the activity is not adult-directed, not designed for a certificate or exam, but for the sheer joy of creation and interaction.
We should also recognize that play is an equalizer. In a classroom, children are often judged by their marks. On a playground, a shy child can suddenly shine by being the fastest runner or the best at thinking up new rules. These small victories build confidence in ways academics cannot. They remind children that their worth is not limited to how they perform on tests, but also in how they participate in life.
I remember a student who was considered “average” academically. Teachers often overlooked him. But on the football field, he was a leader, strategizing and motivating his team. Over time, the confidence he gained on the field spilled into the classroom. He began speaking up more, participating, and gradually improving academically. That arc would have been impossible without the space for play.
So what can parents do in today’s packed schedules? The first step is to stop seeing play as a waste of time. Protect at least 30–60 minutes of unstructured time daily, even if it means fewer classes. Allow children to get bored sometimes. Boredom is not dangerous—it is the starting point of creativity. Encourage outdoor games if possible, or let children invent games indoors. Resist the urge to direct their play. Let them quarrel, make rules, break rules, and figure it out.
“Children do not remember the perfect homework you supervised. They remember the evenings you let them be themselves.”
It may sound counterintuitive in a culture obsessed with exam results, but giving children time to play could make them better at academics too. Neuroscientists have found that play strengthens executive functions of the brain—skills directly linked to better problem-solving in subjects like math and science. In other words, the child building a Lego tower today may be the child solving engineering problems tomorrow.
As parents, we must resist the temptation to fill every gap in our child’s day with structured learning. Growth also comes from the gaps, from the silences, from the unscheduled moments. Childhood without play is like a story without laughter—it may have all the facts, but it misses the spirit.
Play is vanishing not because children don’t want it, but because adults have forgotten its value. If we want to raise children who are not just exam-ready but life-ready, we must reclaim play. Because in the end, a child who learns to invent a game with friends learns more about life than one who simply memorizes answers alone.