More than Playtime: The Hidden Benefits of Free Play

What if the smartest thing we can do for our kids is to do a little less? We unpack how free play fuels deep learning, confidence, and resilience in the first five years—and why stepping back can be the most powerful support of all.

I share twin-tested stories that show how different play styles lead to rich growth, even without adult direction. We explore what free play looks like at each stage—from infants exploring textures and movement, to toddlers testing limits with sand and water, to preschoolers building worlds with rules, roles, and big ideas. Along the way, we connect the dots with the Circle of Security approach: kids venture further when they feel a secure base close by. That doesn’t mean leaving them to it; it means staying present, observing, and letting them lead.

You’ll walk away with simple, high-impact strategies: protect unstructured time, curate a few open-ended materials (yes, the humble cabbage box is magic), create a zone where mess equals learning, reduce background noise and screens, and acknowledge effort over outcomes. We also dig into dispositional learning—curiosity, perseverance, creativity, and independence—and how these lifelong strengths grow best during self-directed play. Expect practical tips, warm encouragement, and a reminder that you don’t need to micro-manage to raise capable, confident kids.

If this resonated, share it with a friend who needs permission to put the Pinterest board down. Subscribe for more grounded parenting ideas, leave a review to help others find the show, and tell us your favourite messy free play moment—we’d love to hear it.

Welcome to the Kebudel Parent Podcast—your no-nonsense, fun-filled guide to parenting, straight from the experts who really get kids (and parents too!). 

Brought to you by experienced early childhood educators, we’re here to dish out practical advice, laugh at the messiness of parenting, and share our insider knowledge to help you thrive. From decoding tantrums to sparking your child’s love of learning, we cover it all with a healthy dose of humor and zero judgment.

Why listen? Because parenting doesn’t come with a manual, but it can come with expert-backed insights, a little sass, and a whole lot of support. Let’s navigate this wild ride together—one episode at a time. 

Transcript

Why Free Play Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Kiuda and welcome back to the KidBirdle Podcast. I'm Alex from the First Five Years, and today I want to talk to you about something that I don't think gets enough love, and that is free play. Free play is essentially just as the title suggests, it's giving our children the freedom to play. I want you to think about those moments when your child is completely lost in their own world, they're building forts or scribbling a map to find treasure. Or maybe they're setting up a very well orchestrated tea party. And you might think, well, what's my role in this play? Should I be engaged within this play with my child? What's often reassuring for many parents to hear is that your role is to observe, is to stand back and let this play happen. Maybe, just maybe, you'll get the opportunity to drink your coffee while it's hot. Isn't that nice? It's always a miracle when that happens in my household. But these moments when our children are fully engaged in play and they have the freedom to play, these moments are quite magical and they're quite important for your child's learning. They're important in ways that aren't always obvious. As you probably know, I have identical twin boys, and honestly, they've been my little science experiment since day one. Same environment, same toys, well we did have two of everything because, you know, hashtag sanity. But they had the same household dynamics. They often had really different ways of engaging in play. One might have been lining up his toy cars with military precision, while the other twin was using every pillow in the house and calling it his doghouse. Quite different forms of play, and yet they were both learning so much from these moments. And they are doing all this learning without my involvement. I think it's worth pausing here just for a moment and talking and acknowledging the concept of intensive parenting. This is the idea where we need to be involved in every single aspect of our child's lives, orchestrating every moment and making sure that they're learning or growing correctly and that they're quote unquote happy. I certainly have felt that pressure myself as a parent, especially in the early days when I thought I should be setting up these beautiful activities and

Twins, Different Play, Same Learning

SPEAKER_00 2:20

teaching my twins step by step and making sure that no time was ever wasted. But something quite reassuring is that children don't actually need us to control every moment of their day, and that it's actually okay to step back and let them take the the lead and their play and their learning. And sometimes the best learning that they'll ever do, the learning that really sticks, comes from letting them explore, experiment, and problem solve all on their own. So maybe it's worth asking ourselves, are we expecting too much of ourselves as parents? Are we giving our children enough space to discover things and experiences and learning for themselves? Before I had my twins, I imagined that parenting would look kind of Pinterest perfect,

Letting Go of Intensive Parenting

SPEAKER_00 3:10

you know. I would be down on the floor guiding activities. And at the at that point, pre-kids, I remember thinking that I would have time to write learning stories for them. You know, because previously I was an early childhood teacher and I loved writing learning stories. And well, you know, I think we can all guess how that turned out once the kids actually arrived. Yep. Reality hit. Parenting, you know, and it's messy, it's unpredictable, it's exhausting, and yet it's unbelievably beautiful. But often there's just no time to orchestrate every moment for our kids. And I at first I did feel a bit guilty about that actually, but the thing is, I reminded myself that children do not actually need us orchestrating every move and moment in their lives. Sometimes the most powerful learning happens when they lead their own play. Have you ever stopped to wonder what your child is actually learning when they play on their own? Like really pause and think about it because even if it looks like chaos, you know, blocks scattered everywhere, dress-ups dumped on the floor, mud and water experiments in the backyard, even if it looks like a mess, it's often not our children just messing about. Often when our children are messing about, they're actually developing what we call dispositional learning. When children self-direct their play, they're developing dispositions like curiosity, perseverance, creativity, and independence. The learning how to be self-motivated, how to take risks, how to problem solve, all the skills that will serve them for life. And it actually really connects beautifully to the Circle of Security Parenting program that I facilitate online, where we talk about supporting a child's need to explore while also giving them that secure base that they need to feel emotionally able to go out and push themselves in their learning. So by stepping back, we're actually giving our children the confidence to try new things, to fail safely, and then try again. And that's really quite magical. These are skills that are going to prove very useful in their adult lives. So, what does

Dispositional Learning Explained

SPEAKER_00 5:18

free play actually look like for the different stages in the first five years? Well, infants, you know, their free play is quite simple. It's offering a lot of free movement time where they can get to know how to use their bodies, and you might add a few toys of interest for them to explore. I love open-ended toys, so that's why I love heuristic play. So things like wooden spoons, fabric, bits of fabric, small containers. For them to explore and manipulate however they see fit, even just rolling a ball back and forth or feeling the texture of the wooden block versus the soft toy, that's helping them to make sense of the world and doing so in their own time. Their brain is all soaking it in. So for toddlers, toddlers really need time and space to move and refine their gross motor skills. So jumping, climbing, running, but also time to explore with their senses. So this is where water and sand play really is helpful. So you can just do this by going out in the garden, really. And you might also see toddlers like banging around with pots, pulling your pot drawer out. And yes, that can be a little annoying because it's messy. So then we get to preschoolers. This is the age from about three to five, and so by preschool age,

Circle of Security and Confidence

SPEAKER_00 6:30

we see that preschoolers really benefit from having time to go deep into their play. Time so that they can really elaborate in their play. Because thoughts become castles and dress-ups become elaborate role play, and everyday objects can transform into anything. They negotiate rules, they tell stories, they role play, they collaborate, they develop their social skills, empathy, problem-solving skills, and their independence are all being exercised within play. And they're figuring out their world and they're testing theories and building understandings. I want to pause for a moment and ask you, when was the last time you let your child really lead in their play? Where you stepped back, you didn't direct? Because even just a few uninterrupted moments for our children can make a huge difference in how safe and confident they feel

Free Play by Age: Infant to Preschool

SPEAKER_00 7:18

to explore. And something I often see parents worried about is they think then if they're not constantly teaching their child, then their child isn't learning. But free play supports every area of growth. Children are just inherently learning just because they are in the world. They're soaking it all in. So when we look at free play, we know that free play supports social skills, we're allowing them opportunities to share, negotiate, and take turns on their own accord and see how they can and build an understanding of how to do this themselves intrinsically. They're developing their emotional development by expressing feelings, managing that frustration, and building resilience. And when we look at cognitive skills, we see problem solving, we see creativity and independent thinking, and they're building their confidence and independence because they're trying and they're failing and they're trying again in a way that is safe and fun. So even if it looks like your child is just messing about, they are actually discovering the world, they're experimenting and building the skills that they'll carry with them for life. So as a parent, you might be thinking, Well, how do I support this without taking over? A few strategies I have found that worked beautifully for myself and for parents that I support is allowing unstructured time. Not every minute of the day needs to be planned. Giving your child at least 30 minutes of uninterrupted play to play with whatever they want to do is gold. Two, provide simple, open-ended resources like blocks,

Skills Gained Through Free Play

SPEAKER_00 8:47

dress-ups, art supplies, cardboxes, tubes. Honestly, sometimes a cabbage box is way more exciting and magical to a child than any toy in their toy box. And on this note, I would say less is more a lot of the time with our kids. So if you have too many toys on offer, sometimes that can be really overwhelming for little people. So simplifying what you have on offer can be helpful here. And the beauty with open-ended, simple resources is that our children have to use their imagination a lot. So all of a sudden, a cardboard box could be a car, it could be an aeroplane, it could be a baby's cot, it could just be anything, and they have to use that imagination. And what you'll find

Practical Strategies Parents Can Use

SPEAKER_00 9:32

is that when your child has to use their imagination, they are actually going to concentrate more and be more focused in their learning and exploration. Three, offer space to explore. It's great to have an allocated area in your home where a child can play, where you can let go of the mess and know that the mess is learning. It's not really just mess, it's creative genius and action. Four, step back but stay nearby. Your child isn't designed in the first five years to be disconnected from a caring adult, and that includes in their play. So it's really common for little people to want to play nearby an adult. So if they need support, they can access it quickly. But stepping back doesn't mean leaving the room. It means allowing them to take complete ownership and leadership of their play. So it might look like, for example, you're cooking dinner in the kitchen and just a couple of meters away your little one is playing with their Lego or Duplo. So you can see them and they can see you. 5. Encourage and observe. Notice what excites your child. Acknowledge it, acknowledge their creations and celebrate their creations. Even if it's just a tower of blocks that's halfway collapsed, they created it and they demolished it. And your child will probably at some point come up to you and say, I did this, I did that after their play exploration. And that's a great time to acknowledge and encourage. And lastly, reduce the distractions, okay? This is a big one. It's really helpful for our little people to have screens off, to have a minimal background noise when they're playing, because this allows them to focus more deeply into their play. So as we wrap up today, a final thought. What if we could let go of the idea that learning has to be structured? What if we could trust our child's curiosity a little more each day? How much more could they discover? How much more confident could they become? That's the beauty of free play. By stepping back, we give our children the space to explore, experiment, and discover in their own way. They build their confidence, their resilience, and a and a real genuine love for learning. And the whole time having tons of fun doing it. Thank you for listening today. If you've got any magical, messy or hilarious free play moments with your children that you'd like to share, I would love to hear them. Come and join me in the Caboodle parenting community. This is where we share stories, we encourage one another, and we support each other with no judgment. Until next time, step back, watch your child shine, and celebrate their little discoveries. Catch you next time.