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"Playtime. Downtime. Family time. According to Denise Pope, a senior lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, these three factors - or PDF as she calls them - protect kids against a host of negative outcomes, strengthen resilience, and bolster students' mental wellness and academic engagement. "

"There has been plenty of hand-wringing in recent years about the "overscheduled child." With after-school hours increasingly dominated by piano lessons, soccer practice, and countless other planned activities, many of us have a nagging sense that kids are missing out on something important if they have no time for unstructured play. New research from Germany suggests these fears are justified. It finds people who recall having plenty of free time during childhood enjoy high levels of social success as adults."

"Consider these words from Peter Gray, author of "Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life:" Free play is nature's means of teaching children that they are not helpless. In play, away from adults, children really do have control and can practice asserting it. In free play, children learn to make their own decisions, solve their own problems, create and abide by rules, and get along with others as equals rather than as obedient or rebellious subordinates. Peter Gray's words remind me of danah boyd's descriptions and analysis of the over-scheduled lives of teens in her recent book, "It's Complicated: the social lives of networked teens.""