Dana Obleman: Hi, I’m Dana Obleman. Welcome to this week’s video blog. Today I wanted to talk about something that I’m actually hearing quite often, but it’s a bit of a surprise to me. How do I get my children to go play outside?

If you’re anything like me, thinking back to my childhood, that’s all I did was play outside. We rode our bikes, we played hide and go seek. In fact, my mom couldn’t get me to stay inside. That was the problem.

Now I’m finding, because there’s so many fun things to do inside, and children are so tuned in to their electronic devices. Movies, TV, Game Boys, iPods and you name it, that it’s much more difficult to encourage children to go outside and find something to do.

I want to give you a few tips today that I’ve implemented with our children to just help encourage some outdoor play.

One of the things I think everybody needs to get over, myself included, is that we don’t have to micromanage everything that they do when they are outside. I have slightly older children so I would say, “You need to stay on our street.” Those are the boundaries. “You can go and do whatever you like outside but it needs to stay on our street.”

If you’ve got younger children you might say, “You can go outside and play but you need to stay in our yard.” Whatever you feel most comfortable with.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that just because they’re going outside you have to stop whatever you’re doing and go outside to monitor. We need to give children a bit of freedom when they’re playing outside to invent games, get a little dirty, figure out things to do that can be amusing for them.

I think part of the problem is, because there’s so many activities, video games and computer activities, that children now are having a harder time doing what I would call imaginative play. That’s sad to me, I think. It’s a skill that needs to be encouraged.

It’s also OK to set boundaries about how long they have to stay outside. I know for my own kids I’ll tell them, “Listen, you need to go play outside for the next hour,” or “the next half an hour.” Occasionally they come back every 5 minutes to say, “Can we come in yet? Can we come in yet?” My answer is, “No, you’ve got to stay out until the allotted time period.”

What tends to happen, though, is if I encourage them to stay outside by simply forcing them to, they will figure out a game to play. Then the time goes by and even longer because now they’ve had to think of something to do. The three of them come up with some kind of game or start playing tag or go find other kids on the block to play with.

It’s OK to insist upon it. I mean, it’s sad that we have to, but I really think it’s an important part of being a child. It’s getting outside and figuring out things to do.

If you find that your child is really stuck, they simply get outside and stand around and can’t think of anything fun to do, then it’s OK to give them a few prompting ideas. “Why don’t you go outside and play tag? Why don’t you go outside and kick this ball around?” And give them a few different ideas of things they can do when they go outside. So that they’re not just, you know, kicking a stone around, wandering around, bothering you about whether or not they can come in yet.

Like I said, I think this is an important skill that’s being lost on our children. I want to encourage you to really make this a priority in your life. That often has a lot to do with turning off the electronics and having some strict rules around. An hour of TV time, of computer time, and that’s it. TV goes off.

I find, too, that once the electronics go off then there isn’t all that much more to do inside. By simply turning off all electronics my children will tend to kind of gravitate towards the outdoors anyway because there’s nothing left to do inside.

I absolutely think you need to be encouraging it. I think playing outside, it’s one of my favorite things about my childhood, and I want it to be for my children as well.

I hope that’s helpful. Sleep well.