{"id":952166,"date":"2026-05-11T07:50:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T07:50:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/952166\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T07:50:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T07:50:17","slug":"with-childhood-anxiety-on-the-rise-why-the-decline-in-free-play-matters-more-than-you-might-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/952166\/","title":{"rendered":"With childhood anxiety on the rise, why the decline in free play matters more than you might think"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"As adults we most likely have many fond memories of childhood outdoor games, reluctantly going in when called for the umpteenth time by parents when the night sky was closing in. Stock image.\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/41Silhouette1 group.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">As adults we most likely have many fond memories of childhood outdoor games, reluctantly going in when called for the umpteenth time by parents when the night sky was closing in. Stock image.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">I recently overhead three separate conversations between adults and children about \u2018a really exciting place\u2019 the adult played in as a child. As the children gasped in wide-eyed anticipation to find out where this amazing location was, they were rather taken aback to hear it was called \u2018the great outdoors.\u2019<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">As adults we most likely have many fond memories of childhood outdoor games, reluctantly going in when called for the umpteenth time by parents when the night sky was closing in and even more reluctantly in the summer months when the sun didn\u2019t dip its head until much later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As adults we most likely have many fond memories of childhood outdoor games, reluctantly going in when called&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":952167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4317],"tags":[105,218,16,15,265724],"class_list":{"0":"post-952166","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-wexford-life"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116554855637505871","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=952166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/952167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=952166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=952166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=952166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}