Protecting Play Means Protecting Childhood

 

 

Play is not simply a leisure activity, enrichment opportunity, or optional part of childhood. It is a universal right of the child and a legal imperative recognized under Article 31 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Why?

Because decades of developmental science, neuroscience, public health, and early childhood research consistently show that when children are able to play freely, safely, meaningfully, and relationally, they are more likely to thrive socially, emotionally, physically, cognitively, and developmentally.

In many ways, the right to play exists because play is one of the clearest indicators that childhood itself is being protected.

When children have dependable opportunities to play, they build attachment, regulate stress, strengthen executive functioning, develop social competence, process difficult experiences, explore identity, deepen learning, and experience belonging within their communities and cultures.

Conversely, when opportunities for play are restricted by poverty, exclusion, unsafe environments, racism, ableism, over-surveillance, displacement, trauma, or systemic inequities, children lose access not only to play itself, but also to many of the developmental conditions necessary for healthy growth and well-being.

This is where the Play Security Framework emerges.

What is Play Security?

Play Security situates children’s right to play as a systems-level issue rather than the responsibility of any one sector alone.

It recognizes that children experience play through the interconnected systems that shape everyday life:

• early learning and schools,
• public health,
• housing,
• recreation,
• parks and community design,
• child and family services,
• disability supports,
• food security,
• transportation,
• environmental access,
• and broader social policies.

From this perspective, Play Security asks:

Are the systems surrounding children creating the conditions where play is safe, equitable, dependable, culturally meaningful, and possible?

Importantly, Play Security is both trauma-informed and equity-centred.

It recognizes that outdoor play, community play, and even access to childhood itself are not experienced equally. As Power (2023a) notes, “nature does not erase structural barriers — it reveals them.” Children cannot fully access the developmental benefits of play when systems produce conditions of exclusion, instability, chronic stress, discrimination, or insecurity.

This means Play Security is not solely about increasing play opportunities. It is about addressing the structural conditions that shape whether children can actually experience freedom, belonging, safety, agency, and connection through play.

In this way, Play Security reframes play as:

• a public health issue,
• a children’s rights issue,
• an equity issue,
• a trauma-informed issue,
• and a social determinant of well-being.

Three Indicators That Children Are Thriving

Within the Play Security Framework, we conceptualize three interconnected indicators that help us understand whether children are experiencing the conditions necessary for healthy development and thriving:

1. Access and opportunities to play across all systems and environments children encounter.
2. The ability to relate to others through play in healthy, secure, and meaningful ways.
3. Emotional safety and physical freedom to process difficult, confusing, traumatic, and adverse experiences through play.

Together, these indicators move beyond asking whether children are simply “playing more.”

Instead, they help us ask:

Are children experiencing the conditions necessary for play, belonging, resilience, safety, and thriving?

Because when we protect play, we protect childhood. And when we protect childhood, children thrive.