Play is the natural state for children. When a child is experiencing the beautiful feeling of playing freely, they are nurturing the very core of their development. Since the dawn of time, adults have long known this truth. Countles studies by psychologists simply confirm what we feel innately, but even these cannot truly capture the essence, the poetry, of free play. When a child plays, they poke and prod at the World around them. In so doing, they discover their power, their ablities, and shape their personalities.
Take the simple act of saying 'no'. One simple word, that once discovered, enables a child to cause great rifts in the World around them. They can cause anger, upset and mischief. They can turn smiles to frowns. They can delay and manipulate. Any parent from any culture in any time period will tell you the power of that word. One simple word, deployed in an infinite number of ways. A sublime act of playing with reality. And what for? Well put simply, for a child to define itself against the background it finds itself in.
"I am a child who does not like to paint, but I do like to use a crayon," declares the nay-sayer. "I am a child who refuses to eat at mealtimes, but I will eat snacks" declares another. With this act of play, a child says to you: "I have the power to choose who I want to be."
And play does not stop there. A child lifts and drops, opens and closes, builds and destroys. They shout and stay quiet, they laugh and cry, smile and frown. Each action alters the adults in the room, alters their World and gives them a chance to emerge as a real person, with thoughts and feelings and personal choices.
As they grow, play widens. In steps rhythm and song, art and culture, genre and story. Billions of tiny chemical reactions, which we cannot begin to understand, start to shape them from the inside out. They grow faster than the World's smartest super-computer could ever comprehend. We do our best to do everything we can to make this process as fluid as possible. All we really need to do is just allow this to happen, and nurture the brain with more and more new experiences.
And yet...
Try as we might, our children are now in a World where everything conspires against free play. Instead of the calm, safe, unhurried World they need, children find adults bustling to and fro concerned with bills, trying to get to work and feeling like the World is on top of them. Technology blares from every corner and sucks in adults and children alike to its addictive slot-machine style dopamine dispensory.
Children don't understand all this adult nonsense, all they want is an environment where they can play freely. But it is harder and harder to provide that for them.
I'm on a mission to bring my experince as a play specialist, improvised comedian and dad out to the World and support parents break down barriers to play. If you share this mission, please get in touch.
Peace to you and your family and most importantly...
Happy playing!
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