WHEN SCHOOL KIDS LOSE THEIR RECESS TIME.

• Author: Skenazy, Lenore
• Position: LIFESTYLE

WHEN DONNA JAMES' fourth-grade son told her his teacher was taking his recess time away, the Fort Wayne, Indiana, dispatcher assumed this was so he'd have extra time to finish his assignments. "I was OK with it," she says. "Then one day I asked him, 'So what did you get done during recess?' And he said, 'Nothing.'"

Why not? "Because she makes me stand against the wall," he answered. Welcome to the wonderful world of recess withholding.

Most child development experts believe that kids need some unstructured run-around time during the day. The American Academy of Pediatrics has declared that "recess is a crucial and necessary component of a child's development and, as such, it should not be with-held for punitive or academic reasons." And yet schools aren't just shrinking the number of recess minutes per day in order to shoehorn in more class time and test prep: Many allow teachers to take away recess as a form of punishment.

Long Island's Patchogue-Medford School District is moving in the opposite direction. It has doubled the amount of lunch and recess time its students get from 40 to 80 minutes a day, with felicitous results: lower absenteeism and fewer disciplinary problems. "We would never take away math or reading or social studies," says superintendent Michael Hynes. "So why would we take away recess, where they learn just as much?"

That sounds like heaven to Mark Sullivan, an actor/broadcaster in Westerly, Rhode Island, who still seethes when recalling the time his fifth-grader got in trouble for popping a brown paper bag. At lunch the next day, they boy's punishment was to sit at the same table as the special needs kids and not get up till recess was over. "You don't treat special needs people as the penalty box," says Sullivan.

When I asked on Facebook if parents were seeing recess withheld, the answers cascaded in. "My kid misses recess most days because he has to rewrite his assignments due to poor handwriting." "Used regularly at my boys' elementary school as punishment... for using the restroom during 'non-break' times." "For not turning in a parent signature on a form." "For not filling in her reading log." "For being disruptive in class."

That last reason is particularly ironic, since recess is the best way for high-energy kids to blow off some steam in order to make it through the afternoon.

One teacher chimed in to defend the practice--"We work with kids who are coming to [us] from all sorts of situations. I think a lot of...