The Essentials of Proper Recreation

Excerpt from: Do Your Children Play—or Go to the Movies?
James J. Walsh and John A. Foote
The Ladies Home Journal 41 (February, 1924) 40

The authors impart advice about the importance of exercise in the daily lives of children to prevent nervousness.

The child’s recreation should be taken in free hearted sport, whenever possible out-of-doors. This is extremely important for nervous children. Parents should see to it that hours of recreation are spent in games of various kinds and not at the movies, except occasionally and under careful supervision; nor in reading, for most modern reading is disturbing and tends to make people neurotic. The more muscle exercise there is the better; the more the spirit of competition and fun enters into recreation the more wholesome it is; but above all, the child should, as far as possible, have association with children of his own age, and together they should do things by the hour.

Give children this opportunity and these conditions, and their own instincts will enable them to get more real recreation than any amount of sport planned for them by grown-ups. When left to themselves their play brings initiative and proper mental development, which is of great educational value since it gives them resources in themselves that are extremely precious for times of nervous crisis later in life.