ABU DHABI // Play areas to keep children active and away from television screens should be included in all residential developments, according to a leading paediatrician.
Dr Rajeshree Singhania, a neuro-development doctor in Dubai, urged the Government to recognise the value of play and introduce guidelines that would reserve space in future developments for indoor and outdoor recreation zones.
“It’s an appeal to policymakers to accept the concept of play for what it is,” she said. “It is extremely important for a child’s social, physical and mental development and research has shown that free play helps with their emotional development as well.”
Developers should be obliged to include play areas in high rise buildings, in the same way that zoning laws dictate some land-use regulations, she said.
“When you plan a city there are certain laws requiring ‘X’ amounts of green areas per inhabitant. Well, I am of the opinion that all high-rise buildings should have at least some dedicated play areas so kids can have a place to go and play without going out to the roads, where there’s a lot of traffic.”
Dr Singhania is already putting the plan into practice at Dubai’s City of Arabia property project.
She has designed a 5,000 square-foot activity area in the Zenith Tower that would include an outdoor playground with a possible skateboard park, as well as foosball tables and chess boards for older children.
“Dedicated play areas should cover a range of ages,” Dr Singhania said. “It shouldn’t just be a ball pool. There should be space for older kids – things like rock climbing, or we could incorporate skateboarding and climbing ropes.”
As well as teaching social skills, play was particularly important, she said, given the UAE’s soaring diabetes rate, which is triple the world average. Obesity and autism are also part of a host of health concerns that parents have for their kids.
Dr Singhania said the problem in the UAE was that, although playgrounds may be plentiful, they were rarely as accessible to children as they needed to be.
Tatiana Atab, 35, said she regularly took her sons, Luai, aged four, and Khaled, eight, outdoors for sports for that reason but added that most parents would be reluctant to let their children use existing parks alone because they were often surrounded by busy roads.
Bonnie Scott-Laws, the founder of the Working Mothers Group in Dubai, welcomed Dr Singhania’s proposal.
Her group organises outings to parks to avoid “the temptation of just putting your child in front of the television”. But she said many mothers realised that helping their baby develop into sociable adults was becoming increasingly difficult in the electronic age.
“The thing to remember is you don’t need anything overly sophisticated to entertain kids,” she said. “Sometimes a healthy child just needs to roll in the grass and see blue skies.”
Matt Kwong