“It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them.” – Leo Buscaglia
“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.”– Fred Rogers
Post #1 in category. We recommend reading the posts in numerical order.
Play unites the inner life of the child’s imagination with their outward life of action. It blends imagination and behavior into enjoyable experiences. In play, the child rehearses life and practices the foundations for future learning and development.
Play is not a luxury or an extra. It is an essential process of learning and development shared with all mammals. The inclination is innate, but the skills are nurtured and learned.
For children with developmental delays, play may be delayed. Their difficulties may interfere with this natural medium of growth. When play is impeded, so is the development of other essential skills, physical, social, emotional, cognitive, and communicative. Play is the vehicle by which children learn how to connect with others and learn how to learn.
Pretend play combines imagination with reality. A stick becomes a sword, a cardboard box becomes a rocket ship, a powerless child becomes a lion, a king, a doctor, a teacher, a mother, a hero, a superhero. Pretend play allows children to be larger than themselves, freer than their bodies, older than their years. It provides narrative structure to their feelings, gives shape to their worries and longings. It offers them a stage to enact their hopes, to confront their fears, to organize their thinking, emotions and interpersonal relationships.
The content of play is drawn from ordinary life around the child, parents cooking, going to work, siblings arguing, the family dog sensing danger. In its emotional tone, play provides a safer expression for the child’s private anxieties and secret wishes. Through fantasy play we get clues about the child’s inner world, their ambitions, their frustrations, their loves and their fears. The fantasies may be strange and impossible, but the intent and the feelings may be real.
Play is Liberating
In play, the child feels powerful, competent, and admired, not judged or categorized. It is an experience where mistakes do not cause humiliation and doubt but instead invite another try, another version, another solution. In play, there is no shame, only effort, rehearsal, and enjoyment. Problem-solving is practiced. Causation, planning and hypothesis-testing are learned. Flexibility of imagination and thought are promoted, and coping and resilience are rewarded. In play, children laugh, negotiate, take turns, and learn empathy. They practice improvising and adapting the mindsets, the effort and skills needed to navigate real life experiences.
When I played with children in my clinic, I never felt I was working. I was being invited into their world, sometimes a doctor’s office with dolls and bandages, sometimes another planet, or a birthday party, or a superhero drama with dangers and rescues. I could feel what the child felt and what they feared and what they liked and expected, and what they hoped for and imagined themselves to be. And the child, sensing my engagement, felt that they and their inner world mattered. Play became a shared language, a time and a place for genuine connection and collaboration. The safety and close relationships nurtured during play were easily carried over to more “academic-like” but still interesting and enjoyable problem-solving learning experiences.
What a Loss
As we grow older, play can become increasingly constrained. We become more self-conscious, more aware of the judgment of others. Feelings and imagination become private, internalized, secret. The openness, the freedom and imagination of play give way to overly systematized and overly controlled lessons, tedious rehearsal and meaningless memorization. There is only one right answer. There is only one right way of doing things. The free, improvisational joy of early play is dismissed as “childish,” unserious, unproductive, wasteful.
There is so much to be gained from creativity and mediated play. When I spoke with fulfilled artists, teachers, scientists, engineers, mechanics and parents they describe their responsibilities and work as a kind of play. Their laboratories and workshops, their classrooms, offices, homes, travels and readings are like playgrounds. Their interactions, their communications, their problem-solving have the same curiosity, ingenuity and joy that a child has when building a tower of blocks, or pretending to explore a jungle, or listening to a favorite story.
We dismiss play as escapism, as evasion of responsibility, when in fact it is an enthusiastic rehearsal for life. In childhood, it provides the scaffolding for interest and learning, for imagination, for resilience, for interpersonal connection. In adulthood, play and imagination enable better understanding, metaphor, discovery, communication, relationships, art, science, and joy.
Our clinic became a playground. The children were our playmates and our teachers. As I learned to play with a child and the child learned to play with me, I discovered the child, the interpersonal relationship, and myself. Through frequent playful Parallel Assessment and Parallel Development activities, the child and I learned about each other, what we could do, and what we could learn to do. I received a salary. But I don’t know why.
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