A Grown-Ups’ Guide to Play
Lately, I have been focused on one thing: getting more kids to camp. Last year, we built out Stomping Ground to make room for more campers, and now that we’ve got the space, I'm anxious to find new families to help us grow this community.
Speaking of anxious thoughts…
Every parent I know is walking around with their face buried in Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation. Haidt’s latest book. Yes. Kids are anxious, and parents are anxious about their anxious kids. Haidt’s point is the phones are making it worse, which is somehow making us even more anxious. Haidt's solution is two fold, one: take the phones away… ( this one is complicated ) and two: give kids more freedom. THAT it’s something we’ve been shouting about at Stomping Ground since 2015: Play. But not the structured, adult-driven kind that turns into “play practice.” I’m talking about free, wild, kid-led play—the kind that lets kids be a little ridiculous, a little messy, and actually learn how to do life on their own.
Rediscovering Kid Freedom
It’s no secret that kids today are missing something crucial. It’s called freedom.
Haidt is not the first big thinker to get into this. But his argument is so clear.
As Haidt explains, since the 1990s, parents have been increasingly restrictive with their children’s freedom, largely influenced by fear-driven narratives around childhood safety
BUT Childhood is about practicing independence it is about getting into adventures
It is a critical period where children are supposed to practice this independence that we have taken from them. Robbed them from the ability to learn about themselves and the world around them. This argument is clearly backed up by data. In part by the same data that launched Stomping Ground.
When we founded Stomping Ground, we knew this was a problem. One of our board members, James Davis, introduced us to the work of thinkers like Peter Gray and Lenore Skenazy, who both believe that freedom and autonomy are essential parts of growing up.
I remember feeling electrified as we read and discussed the importance of letting kids make decisions, wander, and just be kids. It felt like a revelation: Why wasn’t everyone obsessed with giving kids more room to play and grow?
At that time, the conversation about kids focused on resilience and “grit,” concepts popularized by authors like Paul Tough and Angela Duckworth. While these ideas acknowledged that kids need challenges, the broader culture was still fixated on academic success and insulating kids from failure.
Today, the conversation seems to be shifting. Even Vice President Kamala Harris recently talked about her childhood “bike gang” days on Brené Brown’s podcast, reminiscing about how all the kids would gather and roam freely, eating dinner at whichever friend’s house they landed at. It was a time when neighborhood kids found independence through shared, unsupervised play.
The Secret Sauce of Camp: What Unstructured Play Really Does
What do kids gain from this freedom to play? It’s deceptively simple: they learn how to be human. They get the practice they need to function in the world—trying things, failing, and figuring out how to fix problems on their own. It’s messy and unpredictable. As a camp director, I sometimes feel nervous when parents visit and see the “chaos”—the mess, the drama, the homesickness, the moments of boredom. But I also know that these challenges are precisely what makes camp so valuable.
When kids have access to this kind of freedom, they figure things out. They develop resilience and confidence because they’re the ones navigating the experience.
Free Play Includes Conflict.
After the latest election, I know we have all been thinking a lot about how divided our country is, especially on moral issues. It seems that everyone is waiting for a conflict of ideology to help them pick friends, neighborhoods, schools, camps. At Stomping Ground we talk ALOT about how conflict is important. Not always the “fun-est” part of camp but critical to building empathy, and critical for creative thinking and problem solving. Conflict is a huge component of PLAY. When we protect kids from conflict ( exclusion, teasing, insults ) we set them up to be easily damaged and easily discouraged. At Stomping Ground, we let them wrestle with these conflicts, helping them build a toolkit for handling all the complicated stuff life throws at them.
Why We Need You to Help Us Spread the Word
So maybe you’re reading this and thinking, “Hell yeah, this is why I send my kid to Stomping Ground!” Or maybe you’re thinking of a neighbor kid who could use some of this camp magic. Here’s the thing: we need you to help us grow this community. Camp works best when there’s a vibrant mix of kids learning from each other, figuring things out together.
Haidt talks about how, as a society, we could solve this “anxious generation” problem overnight if we all agreed to stop giving teens phones until they’re older or told our kids to go outside and not come back till the streetlights turn on. But realistically, the simplest way to give kids that freedom? Send them to camp. It doesn’t have to be Stomping Ground. Honestly there are thousands of incredible camps in the country. Just make sure that the camp you choose can offer true play. Unstructured play, freedom, and real problem-solving as a part of their curriculum.
Camp is the raw, joyful, messy experience of growing up. And we want to bring more kids into this space because we know they’ll walk away stronger, more confident, more willing to incorporate others perspectives.
Let’s fill this place up!
Laura Kriegel, MSW is the founder and Executive Director of Stomping Ground. Laura embodies what it is like to lead a team and business while still nourishing your inner child. She loves painting, being silly, and walking Wendy around the perimeter of camp every day.
Connect with laura : Laura@campstompingground.org