I'd like to continue with some thoughts about the value of play and ways to foster healthy play. Have you ever noticed that when your child is really sick the playful glimmer in his/her eye disappears? When that glimmer returns, you know your child is recovering. Parents and health care professionals intuitively know this. There is a link between playfulness and health. Pediatricians recommend play because it supports physical, emotional, cognitive and social development. Play enlivens life!
There is also a link between creativity and playfulness on the one hand, and between aggression and a lack of playfulness on the other hand. There has been research conducted on the winners of the Mac Arthur award and it was discovered that they are overall curious, creative and they value play. It is a playful approach that allows the inner genius to be expressed and developed in each of us. Engineering firms have discovered that the best engineers are "tinkerers" or people who bring a spirit of playfulness to their work.
Research has also been done about people who commit murders, initiated when the student at Austin University went to the top of the tower and shot people below. Scientists were commissioned to study the shooter and since then more evidence has substantiated their claims. They have discovered that these murderers have two commonalities: one that they have a history of abuse and secondly they have an inability to play due to lack of experience in playing. Although they might have achieved things in their lives, they did not engage in lighthearted, self-directed play which is a healthy way to work through frustration and aggression. Play itself or a playful spirit is a stress-reducer, one without contra-indications.
While our old economy is changing, the emerging model of the 21st century is the "Economy of the Imagination". The problems we have presently require a new kind of thinking to resolve them, one that we possibly haven't even thought of yet. It's not enough to have knowledge, we also need to entertain possibilities and to imagine our way into the future. Businesses are reporting that new employees often lack the imagination and the social skills required to sit at a table with a group of people and work through a problem. These skills require active participation to learn; they cannot be learned passively through a didactic approach or by engaging with a screen.
Imagination is developed through play. It is a function of the right brain which experiences peak development from birth to seven years of age. Albert Einstein said that the best science is built on a foundation of wonder and imagination. It seems that we are more inclined these days to go straight to the science and miss out on building the foundation that makes great science possible.
There are ways to foster creativity and play, just as there are signs that the wellspring is clogged. Media has a clogging effect on children's healthy play, offering images that are hard to digest since they come from an adult's imagination rather than welling up from inside the child and then being acted out. The child trying to act out media images often says a lot, repeating certain phrases but takes little action. The images can get stuck in the child's head, unable to flow through to their limbs even though the child is innately programmed to imitate or act out what he or she has witnessed. The experience of television is so one-dimensional that can thwart healthy expression, promoting passivity and frustration.
Certain toys, usually the ones that have batteries, have the same effect as media. They can do everything without any input from the child, thus thrwarting the child's participation. These toys leave children with only one creative option, that is to break them. Children are often happier with open-ended toys like a cardboard box or a set of blocks so they can express their own creativity.
Another obstacle to children's healthy play is too much intellectual information which leads them to thinking rather than doing. Signs of a child being too much in their thinking is asking questions incessantly, having difficulty initiating and completing tasks or working through simple problems and then ultimately a low threshold of frustration. An adult can help a child develop imagination rather than premature intellectualization by the way we answer children's questions. For example, if a child asks why it is raining, the intellectual answer would be to talk about condensation, clouds, barometric pressure and the like. This answer is often unsatisfying for the young child, although it is appropriate later on. The answer that speaks to the young child's stage of development is more like: it is raining because the plants are thirsty. This makes the young child happy who then looks at the rain as a positive thing on behalf of the plants. This may lead to observation of the plants and how they open up after a spring rain and the sheer wonder of it all.
If a child is still unable to find his or her way to healthy play, there is something else the adults can do. When the adults engage in purposeful physical work (like domestic chores rather than computer work), children often become inspired in their play. They might work or play alongside us while we do dishes or sweep the floor or build a tower while we sew on buttons. It is however, not just a matter of what we are doing, but the inward attitude we carry while we are doing it as well. Children are mindreaders you know. If we are rushed or caught up in fears about a child getting hurt or making a mess, the child becomes inhibited in play. Our attitude needs to be one of timelessess(even while keeping the end point in mind), tolerance of some messiness, of trust in the child's capabilities and of joy so the child can go forward with confidence and learn from the trial and error process that is play.
The young child gains mastery over their world through play. They learn about the world and about themselves. For as a child plays, we see indications of what they are passionate about. You might try but you cannot put a child in a box unless it has their passion in it. But while a child is playing, you might see a glimpse of their future. That is something worth supporting by creating time and space for it.
