Do you know your child? Why is he/she not social? Why is he/she obese? Why is he/she extra tired, moody, irritable, and violent?
Pius Pascal
An Urban Planner with extensive experience in strategic planning, infrastructure development, feasibility studies, regulatory compliance and project management.
Being an urban planner, part of my job affects most areas of your well-being and success. I design the estates you live in, define those spaces, and give them the particular use you enjoy and treasure. To add, I impact your daily mood, and with good planning and urban design, I can make your days forever memorable, name it good parks, walking paths, residential areas, working and industrial parks. I provide or deny all this with just my signature. With all this power, I am here to educate or even highlight a concern or observation on our kids' availability of play areas. We all live in gated estates or just city dormitories like Huruma, Embakasi, Kasarani, Ruaka, and kikuyu in Nairobi.
These areas are jam-packed with people, cars, and animals; most have no dedicated play areas or parks. Most ignorant parents will say that our kids’ schools have a playground. But playing is essential to growth, as I will demonstrate in a few. Kids have friends both in school and within the estate. These kids go to different schools. So, when they come back home, they want to interact and play and also learn from their friends; they want to see assignments from the other school, they maybe want to showcase a new trick they learned from their games teacher, and all this is part of socializing and emotionally exploring. But there are no playgrounds, so these kids play on the roads, residential thoroughfares, and alleys. Weary of vehicular and residential access, they have to juggle all the madness in that particular urban space. And with all these dangers, most parents don’t allow their kids to play outside.
According to Jordan Peterson- a Canadian psychologist, there are two types of parents: those in their 20s who tend to be usefully negligible to their kids, which may be a good thing for it gives the kids time to grow and play exploratively and those in their 30s or later who tend to be more conservative and want to regulate every aspect of the kids play and growth. Kids need some essentials when growing, and these essentials have been pegged into research as Molly Write explains in her TED talk that, at the ages of 0-5 yrs, kids' brains grow faster, attaining almost 90% size compared to an adult's brain. During this period, these kids learn a lot in a very short time. They are eager to connect and talk; they want to play; they need a healthy home and a healthy and vibrant community.
These are just the basics in these accelerated periods of growth when all senses are active. During this period, they meet other kids from different homes, know how to interact and stand for themselves, appreciate their brother or sister, and understand the nanny, the dad, the mum, and anyone in their lives. It’s a web of information they are processing, which is happening in these playing ground areas. Playing improves the kid’s physical health, reduces the chances of obesity, improves cardiovascular health, and, most importantly, tremendously improves their social and emotional acuity. According to ABC Broadcasting, exposing your kids to unlimited screen time on phones, tablets, or laptops affects their emotional and social development. The lack of physical play, exposure, and interactions in keeps, when they are growing is visible or depicted when a kid develops these symptoms. Being extra tired all the time, moody, irritable, obese, and, in others, violent.
Your child's social and emotional growth is essential. This can be fully harnessed by allowing your kid to interact and play with other kids in the play areas or outside. It would be best if you got the kid involved and moving and always in the outdoors. They should start young and also need to be exposed to a lot of games and exercises. These play areas do not necessarily need to be safe grounds but also unsafe ones. This will ensure that the kid conquers the obstacles with their judgment of risk, making them confident when playing. This will automatically transcend and reflect as they carry out tasks elsewhere as they grow.
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With all this kid's play and growth research, what do we urban planners and designers have to do to ensure that these dormitory areas have these facilities embedded in our designs despite having limited land resources in these areas? We must develop innovative and clever ways and solutions to ensure that the streets and estate thoroughfares design allow kids to play. Being an urban planner and designer who is undertaking my master's research, I am working on some strategies for the particular estate I am living in; this will ensure that my kids have the best exposure and interact with their friends, and holistically improve their emotional and social growth during their 0- 10 years as they undergo the initial misery of knowing, learning, and interacting.
Written and researched by,
Pius Nyamasyo Pascal
Urban and regional planner/Urban Designer