Playing, It's Not Just Child's Play.
By Troy L Parrish.
A recent article published by the American Academy of Pediatrics discussed the importance of play in the lives of children. Noting that there is increased pressure on families to provide children with the optimum benefits as well as to take full advantage of all of a child's potential coupled with a hurried and busy lifestyle, the article reports that there is an alarming decrease in the type of play that most of us as adults equate with play. The reason for the alarm is the multitude of benefits that come from play.
Kenneth R. Ginsburg, MD, MSEd and the Committee on Communications and the Committee on Psychological Aspects of Child and Family Health in their article titled The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds write "Play allows children to use their creativity while developing their imagination, dexterity, and physical, cognitive and emotional strength. Play is important to healthy brain development. It is throught play that children at a very early age engage and interact in the world around them. Play allows children to create and explore a world they can master, conquering their fears while practicing adult roles, sometimes in conjunction with other children or adult caregivers. . . play helps children enhance confidence and the resiliency they will need to face future challenges. Undirected play allows children to learn how to work in groups, to share, to negotiate, to resolve conflicts, and to learn self-advocacy skills."
Take time to read that paragraph again, the values of play listed in that paragraph are significant. What is important to note is that the type of play that is being discussed is the unstructured play that occurs asside from electronics or the structured play that occurs in adult supervised activity (sports would be a good example of an adult led activity). It is this unstructured and child led play that promotes these benefits. Unstructured play requires the use of imagination as well as negotiation and cooperation. But what is really revealing is the significant role that play has in the cognitive/intellectual development of children. With the emphesis that is being placed on early childhood development and education at early ages the notion that play may have an intregal role in the nueral development of young children should not be ignored. Last month's featured article on video game addiction cited an article that is relevant to this discussion as well.
National Public Radio posted an article titled Old Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills. In this article they interview researcher Elena Bodrova at Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning. Dr. Bodrova discusses the results of one of her research projects:
"It turns out that all that time spent playing make-believe actually helped children develop a critical cognitive skill called executive function. Executive function has a number of different elements, but a central one is the ability to self-regulate. Kids with good self-regulation are able to control their emotions and behavior, resist impulses, and exert self-control and discipline.
We know that children's capacity for self-regulation has diminished. A recent study replicated a study of self-regulation first done in the late 1940s, in which psychological researchers asked kids ages 3, 5 and 7 to do a number of exercises. One of those exercises included standing perfectly still without moving. The 3-year-olds couldn't stand still at all, the 5-year-olds could do it for about three minutes, and the 7-year-olds could stand pretty much as long as the researchers asked. In 2001, researchers repeated this experiment. But, psychologist Elena Bodrova at Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning says, the results were very different.
"Today's 5-year-olds were acting at the level of 3-year-olds 60 years ago, and today's 7-year-olds were barely approaching the level of a 5-year-old 60 years ago," Bodrova explains. "So the results were very sad."
Sad because self-regulation is incredibly important. Poor executive function is associated with high dropout rates, drug use and crime. In fact, good executive function is a better predictor of success in school than a child's IQ. Children who are able to manage their feelings and pay attention are better able to learn. As executive function researcher Laura Berk explains, "Self-regulation predicts effective development in virtually every domain."
Just as important as the developmental benefits of play is the relational benefits of play. The American Academy of Pediatrics article researches also found in their investigation that "Children's developmental trajectory is critcally mediated by appropriate, affective relationships with loving and consistent caregivers as they relate to children through play." "The interactions that occur through play tell children that parents are fully paying attention to them and help to build enduring relationships." Therapist have known for many decades that less verbal children may find ways of expressing themselves through play and that play can act as a medium for children to work through some of their emotional difficulties.
The article a little later on discusses the difficulty that overstreched parents may have in playing with their children, particularly when there is a list of structured after work activities to attend to. While the researches list several problems associated with this business the most significant loss is sumed up by this quote: "Most importantly, parents lose the opportunity for perhaps the highest quality time with their children. Some of the best interactions occur during downtime - just talking, preparing meals together, and working on a hobby or art project, playing sports together, or being fully immersed in child centered play. . . Although no one can be sure what skills will be needed (in a future job market) certain character traits will produce children capable of navigating an increasingly complex world as they grow older. These traits include confidence, competence, or the ability to master the environment, and a deep-seated connectedness to and caring about others that create the love, safety, and security that children need to thrive. In addition, to be resilient - to remain optimistic and be able to rebound from adversity - young people need the essential character traits of honesty, generosity, decency, tenacity, and compassion. Children are most likely to gain all these essential traits or resiliency within a home in which parents and children have time to be together and to look to each other for positive support and unconditional love."
Furthermore, the ability of children to learn more effectively may be helped by unstructured play placed in their day (think recess like you remember it). The researchers found that a child's ability to store new information, their cognitive capacity is enhanced by a clear cut and significant change in activity. The change in academic subjects does not provide this clear cut change and it doesn't address the wiggles. The author of the article notes "Reduced time for physcial activity may be contributing to the discordant academic abilities between boys and girls, because schools that promote sedentary styles of learning become more difficult environments for boys to navigate successfully."
While a child's life certainly needs to be structured, ordered and disciplined, there also is need for the good old fashioned fun of play that most of us adults had the opportunity to enjoy. Play is more than something that fills the remainder of the day when all the work is done, it is part of the work of growing healthy children. So go play!
Please visit the article discussed here. They are both worthwhile reading and the above is really just a summary.
Old Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills by Alix Spiegel National Public Radio, April 2, 2008 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19212514
The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds by Kenneth R. Ginsburg, MD, MSEd, and the Committee on Communications and the Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health. American Academy of Pediatrics.
http://www.aap.org/pressroom/playFINAL.pdf