Outdoor play is vital to child development, but excessive heat is creating complications

As North Texas endured triple-digit temperatures in mid-July and throughout August, children on summer vacation looked for a pool or splash pad to cool down at. Now that the school year is in full swing, the importance of getting children outdoors is still being prioritized, but the lingering high temperatures coupled with infrastructure woes are making it difficult to provide this need to students and children.

Texas is no stranger to the extreme heat. The Dallas-Fort Worth area reached a high of 107 on Aug. 19, almost one week after students returned to school in the Fort Worth Independent School District. Air conditioning woes also disrupted the first day of school last year in Fort Worth ISD as 25 campuses had cooling issues in parts of their buildings. As heat has been shown to lead to learning losses for students and medical complications for young children, it’s an issue that’s becoming difficult to ignore. But as temperatures continue to rise across the United States and worldwide, the extreme heat is disrupting the array of benefits children receive when going outdoors.

A working paper published in January by the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University digs into the specifics of how extreme heat negatively impacts child development and health, as children are more vulnerable to excessive heat. Their smaller bodies heat up more quickly, their body temperature regulates less efficiently because they are still developing, and they rely on their caregivers to provide them with water and cool environments.

The Harvard paper notes that the dangers of excessive heat during pregnancy, infancy and childhood receive less attention compared to the dangers it poses on older people and those with heart and lung conditions. Premature birth and low birth weight, learning loss for school-age children and heat-related illness and death are only a few of the impacts.

Children do not sweat as much as adults, which is a barrier to one of the body’s main cooling mechanisms. The inability for the body to cool itself properly can lead not only to kidney failure or seizures, for example, but it also leads to disruptions with learning loss, sleep quality and mental health, according to the paper. Learning loss comes into play as a hot classroom environment distracts students and teachers from focusing, and the heat itself is linked to slower cognitive function. Research shows heat has a direct correlation to school performance.

“One analysis of school age children in the US, England, Sweden, and Denmark calculated that the temperature for optimal concentration is 72°F or lower. Student performance on psychological tests and school tasks can be expected to increase on average by 20% if classroom temperatures are lowered from 86°F to 68°F,” according to the paper. “Conversely, studies show that school performance decreases as temperatures rise. In New York City, for example, learning losses increased by up to 50% when school day temperatures went above 100°F compared to days above 90°F.”

Excessive heat can also perpetuate disparities that are already existing, said Dr. Lindsey Burghardt, the chief science officer at the Center on the Developing Child and an author of the paper. Burghardt is also the founding director of the center’s Early Childhood Scientific Council for Equity and the Environment and a practicing primary care pediatrician.

Excessive heat disproportionately affects low-income communities of color that have been subject to discriminatory zoning and lending practices like redlining. The paper notes that lower-income students are more likely to attend schools with inadequate air conditioning compared to higher-income students. Additionally, Hispanic and Black households are less likely to have access to air conditioning versus white households.

“Heat is so contextually important, and the ways that people are going to experience it really depend on what resources they have to access mitigating and cooling measures. That can be really, really different depending on where you live,” Burghardt said.

The consequences of this are far-reaching because of the educational and developmental value of children spending time outside. For example, vitamin D plays a vital role for their immune systems and bone development, while free play allows them to build skills for troubleshooting, problem solving and multitasking. According to the National Association for the Education of Young Children, outdoor play also promotes better sleep, allows children to take appropriate risks and supports science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills.

Audrey Rowland, founder and CEO of Green Space Learning and president of the Texas Association for the Education of the Young Children, oversees a nature preschool in north Fort Worth where the daily schedule of 40 infants, toddlers and preschoolers revolves around the outdoors. Rowland and her staff keep eyes on the heat index and air quality daily to determine if there needs to be a shift in times that the children are outdoors, but the outdoor spaces are built to be resilient against the Texas heat. They have big, mature trees for shade and man-made shade sails, in addition to a water pump and mister. The children always have access to cold drinking water as well.

On days when the air quality is lower, Green Space teachers pivot to activities that are more passive and expend less energy, such as reading or creating art, Rowland said.

“The difference in kind of a nature preschool environment is that we have so many things to do outside, so we’re conducting a normal preschool outdoors. There’s art, there’s science, there’s dramatic play. It’s not just run and climb and play,” she said. “Our classroom’s open to the playground as well. Particularly in the summer, the doors stay open and children can move in and out as they need to as well.”

Rowland noted how the topic has garnered the attention of lawmakers in a handful of U.S. states where it’s mandated that schools provide recess time every day while making it illegal to take it away as a punishment. Additionally, initiatives such as the National Schoolyard System, which increases tree canopy on public school grounds nationwide to provide shade and shield students from extreme heat, are creating the needed infrastructure to build resilience against climate change and its impact on children.

“Being outside is so critical to learning and development, to increasing those neurotransmitters, to increasing dopamine and mood,” Rowland said. “Creating some strategies around being outside even when the weather isn’t ideal is just basic care for children.”

Dr. Lisa Patel, clinical assistant professor of pediatrics at Stanford School of Medicine and executive director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, said the temperature at which humans can’t adapt anymore is 115 degrees Fahrenheit with minimal humidity and many places around the world have shattered this record. The transition to renewable forms of energy and abandoning fossil fuels is a crucial step to avoiding a future where it’s unsustainable to be outdoors, she said.

“We keep thinking that it’s going to be OK, we can adjust to the next thing that’s coming, but there’s a point at which, sure we could technically adapt, but we’re talking about a radically different childhood. Radically different ways of living than what we grew up with. This is the world we really want to live in? Inside all the time, because it’s too scorching hot to be outdoors?” Patel said.

States can also make more investments in climate resilience, such as California’s $100 million investment that went toward creating spaces for people to go during extreme weather events like extreme heat, she noted. On a federal level, the funding issued to the Centers for Disease Control needs to be increased dramatically, she said.

“We need to vastly increase the funding of both the CDC and increase the funding of the Office for Climate Change and Health Equity to be able to do this job of figuring out programs and educational initiatives and the kinds of initiatives that we need to keep people safe,” Patel said.