Kids playing is great, but I think this article glosses over some important wrinkles.
A big one I see is that some parents seem incapable of distinguishing between "there are times when it is okay for my child to play noisily" and "my child's activities and/or noise level should never be restricted". Playing in a park is great --- that's what parks are for! Playing in your yard, or an apartment courtyard or the like, great. Playing on the sidewalk is fine. . . but remember that sidewalks are also for people to walk on, so if someone comes by the kid needs to realize that they should let them pass. But then we have parents who come into stores and let their kids grab things from shelves and play with them in the middle of the floor, and so on.
Part of accepting and embracing play is understanding that not every moment is playtime, and that even within playtime there can be subcategories with different expectations.
This article frames it in terms of noise, but in my experience a lot of the issues people have with noise are really issues about parents not understanding how to set boundaries for their kids, and teach their kids that behavior --- not just noise, but everything --- has to be adjusted for different situations.
I agree there are some kids and parents who are just unreasonably and/or obnoxious loud in unreasonable moments; I don't think anyone really denies this. I've seen kids race on scooters in supermarkets while the parents were right there. Ugh.
But at least some of these complains have been about really quite reasonable and limited noise levels. For example at my last apartment some kids played out in the courtyard during summer. It really wasn't that often or all that loud. There were a few people who complained as if the kids were out of control, but that wasn't the case at all.
A big one I see is that some parents seem incapable of distinguishing between "there are times when it is okay for my child to play noisily" and "my child's activities and/or noise level should never be restricted". Playing in a park is great --- that's what parks are for! Playing in your yard, or an apartment courtyard or the like, great. Playing on the sidewalk is fine. . . but remember that sidewalks are also for people to walk on, so if someone comes by the kid needs to realize that they should let them pass. But then we have parents who come into stores and let their kids grab things from shelves and play with them in the middle of the floor, and so on.
Part of accepting and embracing play is understanding that not every moment is playtime, and that even within playtime there can be subcategories with different expectations.
This article frames it in terms of noise, but in my experience a lot of the issues people have with noise are really issues about parents not understanding how to set boundaries for their kids, and teach their kids that behavior --- not just noise, but everything --- has to be adjusted for different situations.