How Outdoor Play Therapy Helps Children with ADHD

Researchers are discovering and understanding more and more benefits of outdoor play for all children. In fact, they’ve even identified nature deficit disorder to classify symptoms in children who haven’t been exposed to the outdoors for playtime.

Children with ADHD will benefit from being outside in the same way as children without ADHD, but sometimes those benefits are even more pronounced.

Therapy is supposed to help children learn to regulate themselves, and doing therapy in conjunction with outdoor play can help children reach goals more quickly and naturally.

The good news is that most of the top insurance coverages for new parents include coverage for therapies. Taking the financial burden out of getting your child the help they need will take away excuses to avoid visiting a therapist.

There are several ways that outdoor play therapy helps children with ADHD thrive. We’ll cover a few of the benefits for both the mind and body.

Outdoor Play Therapy Builds Body Awareness

ADHD affects both the mind and body. Children with it have trouble focusing, and they also have a hard time controlling their bodies. They need movement. In some settings, that need for movement can seem problematic. Outdoor play therapy helps children understand their bodies in interesting ways.

Outdoor Play Therapy Increases Safety

Two of the most important senses to develop aren’t part of the big five: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. They’re the vestibular and proprioceptive senses, sometimes called the sixth and seventh senses.

By freely playing outside, children develop their vestibular sense through movement, keeping them safer their whole lives.

How does this happen? When a child climbs a big rock and their foot slips, and they fall, their brains take in an enormous amount of information, and some of the most critical data is received through the vestibular sense.

Vestibular development helps children learn about balance; they learn about where they are in space and the importance of sure footing. The next time they try to climb that big rock, they’ll improve their technique.

Spinning, jumping, running, and falling are all essential elements to a healthy vestibular sense. If children don’t have a chance to play outside and fall, they miss out on developing vestibular awareness, and they’ll be more prone to falls when they’re older and more likely to get hurt.

Another way playing outside leads to safety is when a child does heavy work. Pushing and pulling and lifting, and doing physically challenging things helps children develop their proprioceptive sense.

Whether that work is pushing a large rock to a new location or lifting a snowman section onto the base, they learn how to control their strength.

Without understanding their strength, they’re more prone to hurt others during playtimes. For example, in a simple game of tag, they may tag people out hard enough to hurt them. It’s not that they’re trying to hurt anyone; it’s just they haven’t learned how to use their strength effectively.

Outdoor Play Therapy Teaches Regulation

Interoception is often called the eighth sense. It’s the ability to recognize what’s happening in your body so that you can understand yourself better.

A lot of therapy for ADHD focuses on regulation and calming practices. There’s a disconnect, though, when a child learns the necessary tools for responding to specific feelings, but they haven’t learned to recognize those feelings. They need to develop interoception before they can use regulation.

Spending time outside helps children learn to recognize their own feelings. One way this happens is that when you’re outside, you’re immersed in nature, and you have to organize information from all your senses.

A therapist can then help lead a child by asking about sounds they hear. The child will isolate sounds from the rest of the sensory input. By focusing on individual senses, the child learns to recognize internal feelings to a higher degree.

It isn’t until the child learns to understand themselves first that they can then use the valuable tools for regulation.

Outdoor Play Therapy Helps Children Regulate Their Minds

Being “bored” is a feeling for children with ADHD. It happens when whatever they’re told to study doesn’t capture their attention. When children become accustomed to playing outside, the many elements that make up the outdoors will naturally capture their attention.

They’ll take in incredible amounts of information without even realizing it. Helping to stimulate their minds can have exponential effects, even helping their overall health to increase, which in turn can impact even life insurance.

Outdoor Play Therapy Increases Focus

The outdoors offer freedom. A child can learn through experience. They won’t even feel like they’re learning, but playing outside is the best way to develop your senses.

The following are just a few examples of sensory input that happens outside:

• You can feel the unevenness of the ground as you walk.
• You can feel the breeze while you hear the leaves rustle.
• You can smell the flowers and the dirt.

On an even more complex level, being outside helps you recognize your place in space. As you hear sounds nearby and from a distance, sounds behind you and in front of you, you start to understand where you fit in.

When a child sits in a classroom fidgeting, it’s because they need vestibular input to develop their vestibular sense. The vestibular sense finds its home in the inner ear. All the movements you make register themselves in the tiny hairs of your inner ear.

All children, especially those with ADHD, need to develop their vestibular sense to focus when they need to.

There is a clear connection between playing outside and increased focus in school.

Outdoor Play Therapy Increases Openness

Being outside helps a child feel comfortable. If a therapist tried to complete a session inside while seated with a child with ADHD, frustration from both sides would result.

While outside, a child starts to have an improved mood. Researchers aren’t entirely sure why exactly, but there’s an undeniable connection between being outdoors and having a better attitude. Natural light, fresh air, and stimulation of the senses all combine to help children become happier.

Also, being outside puts the child in a place of comfort. Instead of sitting awkwardly inside, they’re free, which helps them feel comfortable. They’ll be more willing to participate in therapy.

Even adults can benefit from nature’s effect on openness in communication. Marriage counseling may be able to work in conjunction with nature to help you get to the root of your problems.

Outdoor Play Therapy Decreases Anxiety

As outdoor play improves mood, it also decreases anxiety.

Natural environments help reduce the risk of anxiety. Whether those results are due to the calming sounds, the sunlight, or other elements of nature, we, once again, don’t know for sure, but we do know that outdoor time reduces anxiety and improves mood.

Exercise also affects mood and anxiety, and when children play outside, they’re able to exercise spontaneously without even realizing they’re exercising. The combination of physical activity and being outside brings more benefits than either of these focuses by itself.

Outdoor Play Therapy Increases Imagination

Most kids’ toys have a set play potential. For example, a doll is a doll. You care for it like a baby. Dolls are an essential part of development, but so are open-ended toys.

Natural outdoor elements termed “loose parts,” are an excellent way to build creativity and imagination. A child may not know what to do with a branch (an example of a loose part), but they may naturally start using it as a walking stick with exposure. Later, they’ll jump over it as an obstacle course event. Then the branch may become a building block in their fort.

The branch’s potential is as broad as the child’s imagination. Given a chance, a child’s creativity will blossom. Spending time outside is one of the best ways to encourage imaginative play.

Structured settings tend to bore children, especially those with ADHD. Unstructured environments like the outdoors naturally take a child’s attention, so they receive rest for their wearied structured attention skills.

This break from structure helps children with ADHD focus better when they return to a structured setting.

Outdoor play therapy is a valuable technique to help children with ADHD thrive. The best results will be realized when play therapy is combined with unstructured outdoor play opportunities. The more time children spend outside, the more regulated they’ll be able to become.

Melanie Musson is an insurance expert who writes and researches for Clearsurance.com. As an educator and mom of five, she’s seen firsthand the benefits of outdoor play.