The World Health Organization, for example, estimates that eight million children under the age of five die from easily preventable diseases each year, and most of them die from illnesses that are related to malnutrition.
I wish I could make a good-humored remark here somehow connecting play to the sick children, but I don’t think the point needs to be made in any humorous way at all.
Chances are you already know what I am talking about: think of our world without laughter, without the skip of little feet kicking up dust, without the joy of hearing children play with new objects, delighted by their delight. Not much fun, is it? This is not to say that play isn’t fun: child’s play is one of the greatest human pleasures on Earth.
But there’s more to play than just fun. For years, researchers such as Peter Gray and Stuart Brown at the National Institute for Play in California have been insisting that play plays a fundamentally important role in the growth and development of children.
Many of these same researchers are religious in their conviction that the health and education of underprivileged young children around the world is heavily dependent on play.
Vigorous play, such as tag or hide-and-seek, versus building sandcastles at the beach, versus solving things with dominoes or puzzles … Play matters. It happens to be an extremely important factor in the learning, socialisation and life-skill development of children.
In this post, we’re going to delve into the realm of child development, as we look to understand why play is so much more than fun, and how it forms the basis for the development of well-rounded, independent human beings.
If you are a parent, a carer or simply somebody who cares about children, get to know how an integral part of your child’s life best serves their development. Here’s why play is so critical to your child’s development.
The Different Types of Play
When we think about play, toddlers on the playground probably jump to mind, or perhaps a cat batting a ball. There are all sorts of other ways to think about play too. Making sense of those different modes of play is important for understanding how each contributes to developmental health.
Physical Play
By running, jumping, climbing, or doing a similar kind of exercise that keeps children active, children are also increasing their fine and gross motor skills, as well as their physical health.
Constructive Play
Blocks, drawing and puzzle play. Children get to build, paint or solve; they construct something, such as a shape, an object or puzzle, thus building cognitive capacities, such as problem-solving and critical thinking.
Social Play:
This includes games such as hide-and-seek, or role-play; or simply playing together with other children. This type of play teaches children how to interact, cooperate, negotiate and resolve conflicts, which are the essential bases of emotional intelligence and social skills.
Imaginative Play
When children pretend to be superheroes, doctors or explorers, they are engaged in imaginative play. Imaginative play supports creativity, assists children in taking another person’s perspective, and promotes language development.
Solitary Play
Although group play is beneficial, it is not the only type of play that helps children. Solitary play – or children playing by themselves – also has its own advantages. Children learn how to be independent when playing alone; they learn that they don’t always have to rely on other children to keep themselves entertained. They also learn to concentrate more.
Cognitive Development: Play as a Brain Workout
Boosters for playful living are abundant! Play isn’t for goofing off; it is brain power at work. Play is learning as children interact with the world, devise solutions to problems and ways to master challenges.
Look at constructive play for example: when a child constructs a tower of blocks, she does not merely engage with the sub-skill of stacking pieces on top of one another. She learns about how arrangement in space causes an object to be or remain upright; she learns about the irreversibility of certain actions by discovering that the tower doesn’t un-fall.
She builds up and polishes her problem-solving abilities by opting to slot one block before another to make a taller structure, or conceives of the tower as a wider, flatter pyramid-like structure through spatial considerations.
In this way, we found that play is a vehicle for the prefrontal (cognitive) system to extend its purview into the real world through novel experiences.
In addition, imaginative play allows the brain to flex its creative muscles. When little Johnny is a pirate, he is experimenting with roles, situations and solutions. Children who engage in pretend play develop complex information-processing skills and language abilities ways to empathise.
Emotional Development: The Power of Expression
Have you ever watched a child as she plays, noticing how her emotions come alive in her play? Think of how a child’s joy comes out when winning a game, or her frustration when a tricky tower topples to the floor. Play is an innate emotional hotbed for a child’s developing brain.
This “playadesia” is where children practice the skill of self-regulation, work through their frustration, and begin to understand how their feelings could turn into action.
Imaginative or social play, then, can often entail a preschooler ‘playing house’, where she assumes the roles of both the mother and child, acting out both fear and empathy, joy and anger at the behest of her emotions-du-jour. Acting hypothetically can also help children develop concrete tools to manage their emotions.
For instance, a child playing ‘house’ might experiment with soothing a ‘whimpering baby’, or even taking the role of a pretend doctor attending to ‘sick patients’. Through scenarios such as these, children learn to think about their own feelings as well as the feelings of others. This, in turn, helps them develop the type of emotional intelligence necessary to comprehend and manage their emotions.
Moreover, solitary play can be a soothing experience, from which children can emerge ‘pulses happier, and ready willingly to meet new experiences with old resources, after the rest of the day’s ebb brings them back to cares and fears’. It can also be ‘an objectification of emotion … an expression of self,’ perhaps leading them to a richer emotional literacy.
Social Development: Building Relationships Through Play
Lev Vygotsky, who was Jewish and part of the Leningrad Institute of Psychology, outlined that one of the most important tasks of children’s development, in terms of socialisation, is learning how to function in the social world.
This is a skillset largely learned through the act of play. Through social play, children learn how to cooperate, share, resolve conflicts and develop a sense of empathy.
Children also learn how to negotiate and set rules when they play in groups, how to take turns and even when to lose with good grace. Group play is also important to the child’s social development, helping her learn how to get along with others in a group.
This may mean with her fellow classmates at school, her play buddies, or once she takes her first grownup employment, in her workplace.
On top of this, social play teaches children how to use language and talk. When they play a game of tag or re-enact a movie they have seen, they develop the ability to express themselves and negotiate rules and roles.
Over time, all of this helps children to develop excellent social skills. It teaches them how to be friends, how to resolve arguments, and the importance of working together in groups.
Physical Development: Strengthening the Body Through Play
Children must play with their bodies, running, jumping, climbing and dancing; playing games is good for health and enhances development of motor skills. Playgrounds and outdoor sports can improve children’s gross motor skills such as equilibrium, coordination and muscle strength.
Fine motor skills (involving more intricate movements, such as hand-eye coordination) also benefit from play. For example, building and constructive play, especially with smaller objects, strengthens dexterity and precision that are critical for activities such as writing, dressing and utilising eating tools.
In addition to developing skills, physical play maintains a healthy lifestyle. At a time when the majority of children’s free time involves staring at a screen, physical play can prevent inactivity, encouraging increased physical activity so that children become accustomed to enjoyable movement, minimising the chances of childhood obesity and other health problems.
Language Development: Play as a Language Lab
Do you remember watching a bunch of kids in imaginative play when you were a child or a parent? Their ‘chatter’ is not only adorable; it is vitally important for children’s language development. Whether they are negotiating their roles in a pretend scenario or providing instructions while playing a game, children are practising their communication skills and expanding their vocabulary through their play.
For example, imaginative play is a wonderful vehicle for language experimentation: children weave elaborate stories, ask questions, and employ new words that they’ve recently learned. Experimenting with language helps kids develop vocabularies, sentence constructions and narrative abilities.
Social play is another important opportunity for children to practice speaking. They may be arguing over a game’s rules or negotiating who gets to be the ‘captain’ of a ‘ship’. In such activities, children learn how to express themselves more clearly and listen to others.
Creativity and Imagination: Play as a Canvas for Innovation
And creativity itself is not a trait children are born with, but a skill you develop: the perfect setting in which to hone your skills is through play. Through imaginative play, children can begin to think outside the box, develop creative solutions and use objects in new ways.
When a child imagines that a cardboard box she’s found in her front hall actually houses a rocketship and climbs inside to go for a ride to the Moon, she’s engaging in imaginative play. She is stretching her imagination muscles by creating new worlds, new roles and possibilities.
Imagination of this sort is strongly linked to creativity in young adults. It can help kids think outside the box and stretch their ideas into new territories.
Furthermore, creativity isn’t just the realm of artistic creation but is also about problem solving. Constructive play such as building with blocks or creating with clay helps children experiment, make mistakes and try again, all critical creative steps.
Play as a Stress Reliever: The Importance of Downtime
Lest we lose sight of one of the simplest but most substantive benefits of play: it’s fun. Children are stressed; they struggle to make sense of new experiences, new friends, strife at home. Play gives them a means to pump off energy and stress.
Profoundly, having free play (with no rules or expectations) allows children to feel like they’re in control of their environment, allowing them to release pent-up stress. Both action-packed play and more quiet, imaginative scenarios can provide the outlet that children need to help them relax and face their feelings in order to recuperate emotionally.
Conclusion: Play is More Than Just Fun
Overall, play is more than just an entertaining activity: it is a vital component of a child’s development. Different kinds of play – physical, constructive, social and imaginative – help children to build and hone their cognitive, emotional, physical, social and language skills that will be beneficial throughout their Life.
Play teaches children how to think creatively and socially as well as how to express and regulate their emotions.
As adults, we can also make sure that we provide invitations for play. If you are a parent, an educator, or someone who works in childcare, knowing that there is value in play will help to ensure that young people get the experiences they need to thrive.
The next time you see a child engaged in play, remember that they’re not just having fun – they are engaging in a neurological process that assists in shaping who they will eventually become.
So go forth: play with the children who are around you. They’re not just goofing around – they’re structuring their future!