21st century problems. Kids and Gadgets!

Kids Need Physical, Social and Mental Exercise!

Kids in this era have more options for entertainment than ever before. With the advent of portable gaming options, the widespread use of smart phones, and more recently tablets that are little more than oversized smart phones, the often hassled parent often turns to these electronic gadgets to entertain their little ones.

As adults, most of us probably remember our parents and grandparents regaling us with stories of how bad they had it. You probably remember, or know someone who remembers a parent who claimed to have walked uphill to school, both ways. What our elders left out, in many of these stories is how much time they really spent “in the old days” exercising, both in play, and while at work.

The problem with allowing electronics to amuse our kids, is that they aren’t getting the physical and social interactions with other children their age. Electronics may allow for mental stimulation, and encourage the development of quicker hand eye coordination, but they are rarely, if at all challenging to growing bodies, and have even been shown to stunt or even retard emotional and social development.

The answer to this problem is really quite simple: we need to get our kids out to play! Sure, he or she can have “friends” on the Internet, but as a growing child, they need friends they can actually interact with, friends who will lead them in a game of chase, or challenge them to a friendly game of hoops.

Not only do these types of games encourage children to exercise, helping their growing bodies to mature into healthy adults, but they encourage social interaction as well.

Social skills learned on the playground not only encourage children to become problem solvers, but help them to analyze issues from multiple points of view. Recent studies have shown that children who interact mostly with other people via an electronic interface have trouble identifying these “friends” as fellow human beings. Electronic entertainment options also do little to encourage teamwork amongst children, and in most cases even discourage it.

Kids who don’t learn teamwork at an early age are more likely to be challenged once they mature into teens and even young adulthood because they never learned the value of cooperative play, and thus never learned the benefits of teamwork. As adults, we easily recognize the need for cooperation in the workforce, and those of us who cooperate well, and are recognized as “team players” by our organization most likely learned those skills as children and teenagers on a playground, in a gym, or even at our neighborhood park.

Many parents cite the dangers of allowing their children to go to a neighborhood park or playground, with fears of predators and bullies being the most prevalent reasons for not allowing their kids to just “go play.” One of the many reasons that Flippo’s Kid’s Indoor Playground was created was to solve this exact problem: As a Family Entertainment center, located in Broward County, Fort Lauderdale, we provide a safe, well managed, indoor play area for the kids and adults to engage in family activities, and the social interactions that will help them succeed both now, and later on in life. We have 0 video games at our indoor playground, and our state of the art attractions help us keep this rule in place, to provide healthy and active kid’s activities for all the families looking out for things to do with kids in Fort Lauderdale!