I’m worried that children are not getting enough play. As a progressive educator, teacher, and school leader for over 27 years and a parent for 16 of those years, I additionally worry that play is being cutoutof our children’s lives.
I am not the only one who shares this concern. In a New York Times article published a year ago analyzing the state of children’s learning, Brook Allen, a preschool teacher in New York, shared: “... [The children are] coming in and they don’t know how to play.” As I processed this statement, I recalled two conversations with local preschool directors, with over 50 years of combined early childhood education experience with the almost identical observation: “Melinda, the children are coming into preschool and they don’t know how to play.”
There are sobering and staggering statistics to back up these perspectives. In the documentary Growing Up Slowly, which Westland was featured in, I learned that only 25% of children spend an hour or more playing each day; over the last 25 years, 40% percent of elementary schools have reduced time for recess; and 30% of kindergarteners don’t have access to recess.
The effects of play being cut are dire. Joe L. Frost, a professor at the University of Texas, warned, “The consequences of play deprivation, the elimination and diminution of recess, and the abandonment of outdoor play are fundamental issues in a growing crisis that threatens the health, learning, and development of children.” Children’s mental health is at risk. Robyn Monro-Miller, President of the International Play Association agrees: “Play deprivation is perhaps the biggest crisis facing our children in this generation. If we do not allow our children time, space, and permission to play, then the actual long-term implication for our children’s healthy development – both emotionally and physically, is going to be impaired.”
Practitioners on the ground are reporting an epidemic of anxiety. In that New York Times article, one occupational therapist shared, "I can’t tell you the number of families who say their kids are anxious or depressed – and they’re little ones, 4 or 5." Researchers confirm these on-the-ground observations. In Growing Up Slowly, child psychologist Dr. Kathy Hirsch-Pacek notes, “We have young kids who are stressed, who are anxious, who are trying to compete, trying to get it right, like there’s only one right answer for everything, we’ve created a mental health emergency.” I experience this context of ours marked by competition and perfectionism, a race to nowhere that doesn’t leave enough space for children to do their most important work: play.
The data floods me. So maybe let’s take a pause and first define and figure out what play actually is before we explore some antidotes.
Defining “play” can be frustrating because the word is so easily minimized or "poo-pooed" by “serious” adults. Legendary educator Deborah Meier feistily once asked: “If play were called ‘self-guided cognitive activity’ would we take it more seriously? Would we value play more?’”
In her book Onward, Elena Aguilar gives us a framework for understanding play’s attributes:
Apparent purposelessness: Its goal is the activity itself.
Voluntary and inherently attractive: It is chosen, and it feels good to do.
Freedom from time: One loses a sense of time while immersed.
Diminished consciousness of self: It allows children to play without worrying about how they are perceived.
Improvisational potential: It invites openness to new things and ideas.
Continuation desire: It protects a child's essential sense of curiosity.
Webster's Dictionary is also revealing, defining play as "to engage in sport or recreation: frolic," and as the spontaneous activity of children. The word "engage" pops up repeatedly in the many definitions, connecting play to involvement, discovery, curiosity, and knowledge. American Ethnographer George Doresey defined it simply: "Play is the beginning of knowledge."
While the experts define it, I understand the essence of play through a visceral childhood memory. I fondly travel back to my backyard in the summer of 1983 in Upper Arlington, Ohio. My sister Stavra, then nine, and I, age six, were on our rusting turquoise-and-white swingset on that horse swingy-thing where you face the other person and go back and forth. She and I were laughing uncontrollably (which we still do to this day) because I had just asked her what would happen if I ran through a swarm of gnats that were swirling around in the distance. The cloud of gnats had been eerily spotlighted by summer’s golden setting sun – this cloud of gnats was somehow this magnificent, ethereal, glowing suspended entity to me. It was calling me. My sister was about to surely tell me, “Don’t do it” but I didn’t wait for her sound advice. I haphazardly sprinted straight through the cloud, mouth open in laughter.
I consumed at least six gnats, and a dozen more stuck to my sweaty skin. I frantically wiped down my face, spitting, coughing, writhing, scratching my itchy head and hair – and shaking my head at my poor judgement. Once done, I hopped back on the horse swingy thing, accepting my sister’s hard laughter.
We returned to swinging, exceedingly high, each one of us catching air at the top. We held on tightly, our hands gripping and slipping on the metal bars. We smiled, we sang Boy George’s “Karma Chameleon” as the whole janky swingset shook. I shouted to her in a twang reserved only for her: "I haven’t had this much fun since we went to San Francisco!” We somehow laughed harder – harder than the gnatty-cloud incident minutes before. She and I fell off the swing in hysterics, rolling on the grass and dirt patches below.
Stavra knew and I knew that I had no idea where San Francisco was. It was the 80’s and we had never been west of Ohio. We hooted. We hollered. I wiped off a stray dead gnat. To this day, Stavra, age 53 and I, just about 50, still proclaim, “I haven’t had this much fun since we were in San Francisco!” (Someday we will actually go there together.)
So while I can share with you how the researchers, the scholars, the experts from multiple fields define play - do know that my definition of play is that story. It helps me understand the value of play. Now, at first blush, not much happened in my story; there’s not much arc. There’s just two sisters playing, laughing, singing, being silly – a quite familiar thing.
But what if we looked at this story more analytically, maybe even joyfully interrogating it, to understand more deeply the benefits of play? I strain the story two ways to understand what the cost of play’s creep towards extinction means for children today.
First, my sister and I had agency and that previously mentioned “diminished consciousness of self.” I have no memory of my parents there. They were *off* and elsewhere. Play researcher Stuart Brown writes about how play empowers children to be autonomous and resilient.
“You cannot teach antifragility directly, but you can give your children the gift of experience—the thousands of experiences they need to become resilient, autonomous adults. The gift begins with the recognition that kids need some unstructured, unsupervised time in order to learn how to judge risks for themselves and practice dealing with things like frustration, boredom, and interpersonal conflict. The most important thing they can do with that time is to play, especially in free play, outdoors, with other kids.”
A Westland parent recently shared her desire for more neighborhood free play for her children (coincidentally, at a parent ed gathering discussing a talk given by Jonahtan Haidt): “Can we just return to the 80’s and 90’s?” I wish, but no. We can, however, begin to or continue to give our children thousands and thousands of free-play experiences where play leads to resilience. Let’s look away when we see our children about to run through a cloud of gnats. Because it’s through minor risk and poor judgment that children learn resilience and continue to develop healthily.
My second learning from my 1983 vignette is the actual learning that occurred in this tiny moment. When I think about that core memory of mine, I notice that I got the practice of trying something out, testing it, and developing my own theories that informed my future decision-making. Free, outdoor play (Not screens!) is the most potent way to give children this exact opportunity for social skills, meaning making, meta-cognition, and purpose. Play, because it is social, child-driven, and improvisational, has the exact ingredients necessary to prepare children for their uncertain future. Play is the thing.
This past January my son asked me what my “New Year's Revolution” was going to be. It was the language slip I needed and I didn’t correct him. Having a New Year's Revolution seems like the way to go right now.
So I am inviting myself to explore what the revolution of “Let’s play more” can lead to. We will continue to commit to play at Westland, allowing ample time and space for it. I’ll share that I commit to it at home with my own children. I commit to it for myself too! I am inviting you!
