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PLAYING TO LEARN

by David Elkind, Ph.D

Play is the child’s inborn ability to learn about self and world through self-created learning experiences. At each stage of development, spontaneous, self-initiated play is essential to the child’s healthy intellectual, emotional, and social development.

The early years
No one teaches the infant to babble. Yet it is through the infant’s self-initiated babbling that he creates all the sounds from which to select those of his native language. Likewise, the infant’s progress in crawling, standing, and walking derives from his own desire for locomotion, not from instruction. Nor can we teach a child the difference between hot and cold, rough and smooth, loud and soft, sweet and sour, round and square. It is only through actively touching, feeling, listening, tasting, and observing that the child learns to make these different assessments. To be sure, we can give the child the names for these experiences. But it would make no difference to the child, for example, if we taught him to call black things “red” or round things “square.” Giving a child the name for something is really the icing on the cake. The hard part is the discriminations the child has to make through playful exploration and discovery.

Through her self-created experiences, the young child learns about herself as well as about her world. One only has to watch a baby fascinated by moving her hands to appreciate how the child learns about herself through play. Or observe the toddler teaching herself to climb everything that is remotely climbable. And look at how the preschooler engages in negotiations over who is to play the teacher, who will be the pupil, who’s the doctor, who’s the patient, and so on. Through these spontaneous conversations and interactions, the child learns whether she is a leader or follower. She also learns which child is outgoing, which child is shy. And she begins to construct a sense of gender identity as she sets herself apart from the rough and tumble play of the boys. While some of this learning about world and self can come about through instruction, it is learned more easily—and more profoundly— through play.

Play is not only a fundamental mode of learning about self and world. It is also a mode of discovery and invention. At a few months of age, the infant turns everything it grasps into an object to be banged. In effect, the infant has invented new uses for wooden spoons, dolls, toys, and any other object that comes to hand. With the attainment of language, the child’s playful creative powers come to full flower. There are the charming metaphors—“Look Mommy” says the child holding a potato chip, “A butterfly.” Or, “Mommy, please turn off the sun, I want to go to sleep.” Preschoolers also make up their own words to represent concepts they themselves have created. One of my sons introduced the word “stocks” to refer both to my socks and his mother’s stockings. Another child called his daddy’s briefcase, his “work purse.” One youngster, lacking the word for airplane, called the first one he saw a “choo choo bird.” This form of language play fades once the child enters school, and self-initiated play takes on new forms and functions.

The school years
Infants and young children are programmed to learn to walk, talk, and make sensory discriminations. School age children, however, have no inborn need to learn academics. That is why play is such a crucial adjunct to learning the school curriculum. Good teachers have always known this. Such teachers appreciate that children of school age take enjoyment from playing games with rules. Contemporary teachers who make learning a game, and who link instruction to children’s interest in sports, music, TV programs, and computer games are much more effective than are those who do not. Successful instructors teach children first and subject matter second, while the reverse is true, those more interested in teaching subjects than children. The focus on children helps explain why one of the most effective educational initiatives today is the integration of curriculum with computer game technology. Now that computers have become permanent fixtures in our schools, it will become increasingly possible to link children’s motivation for game playing with academic subject matter.

Equally important for this age group is the social learning that children derive from playing games with rules. Consider children playing a game of Monopoly. The children have to learn strategies—when to buy and sell property—but they must also get to know the other players’ tactics, their body language as well as their likes and dislikes. In playing their own self-initiated games like “Hide and Seek,” children have to set their own boundaries, to decide who is “it,” and agree on when, where, and how long, to play. In so doing children learn to compromise, to make and break rules, and to distinguish between rules which are of their own making and those which are dictated by society. They also learn “mutual respect,” the willingness to abide by rules made by their peers. While some of this learning can be acquired through participation in organized team sports, it is achieved more meaningfully, and more fully, in children’s self-created games. That is why it is so important to balance children’s adult organized activities with those they themselves have devised.

What parents can do
Children are programmed to play—it is their birthright. As parents, we need to insure that children have the time and opportunities to engage in the kinds of play that foster their mental and physical growth and encourage their imagination and creativity. For infants and young children, the primary rule is that “less is more.” Infants and young children are so good at creating their own learning experiences, we do not need to overload them with toys and technology. A troubled mother confided in me recently that her two-year- old daughter had spent more than an hour playing with toilet tissue. I assured her that her daughter did not think of what she was playing with as toilet tissue. For this child, it was a magic material of which she could make robes, capes, bandages, and much more. At Christmas, I am always impressed at how my grandchildren have more fun with the boxes the toys came in than with the toys themselves. The single best toy for these age groups is a good set of differently-sized and shaped wooden blocks. With increasing age and ability, children will use these blocks in ever more complicated and interesting ways.

During the first four or five years of life, it is also important not to rush children through their play. Many young children will become so engrossed in their self-initiated play that they may remain concentrated on the same activity for hours. Although this play may seem repetitious and boring to us, it is not to the child. Each repetition is filled with fresh nuance that we experientially foreclosed adults can hardly appreciate. That is why children love to hear the same story over and over again. What we adults fail to appreciate is that at each reading the child takes in more of the details of the pictures and the nuances of the spoken word. Young children “dawdle” for the same reason. The world is very new and fresh for them and they need time to explore and discover it.

Young children’s questions provide a unique opportunity to encourage their imagination and fantasy. The critical point to remember in answering a young child’s questions is her belief that everything on earth is here for a purpose. So when a child asks, “Why does the sun shine?” she is not really asking, nor would she appreciate, an answer having to do with the relation between heat and light. A more appropriate answer would be “to make the flowers grow and to keep us warm.” This is really not a wrong answer and has the advantage of letting the child know that we understand what she is asking. In addition, such an answer reflects what the child herself was thinking. Indeed, the child often has her own answers to the question she asks. Another option, therefore, is to ask the child, “What do you think?” If we use this approach, we must be sure to accept the purposeful response and thank the child for an “interesting” answer.

Encouraging play, imagination and curiosity for school age children becomes a bit more complicated because of school, peers and technology. With respect to school, it is helpful to teach children the “dumb books” concept. Children tend to believe that anything that is in a textbook is true and correct. But all too many textbooks are full of errors of fact and grammar, of bad examples, and of confusing and contradictory statements. It is a meaningful exercise in critical thinking to go through textbooks with children and to look for and to identify errors of this kind. This exercise can take the mystique out of texts and help children appreciate that if they don’t understand something in a book, it could well be the book that is in error. We can also nourish our children’s creativity by encouraging them to give alternate endings to the stories we read together. And, while riding in the car, we can play games like asking our children to think of as many uses as they can for familiar objects, such as spoons and forks, pencils and popsicle sticks. Imagination, curiously and creativity are very much like muscles—if you don’t use them, you lose them.

Supporting self-initiated social and individual play
We can also help ensure that our children engage in healthy social learning. In the past, children routinely played with their peers in the neighborhood. For many young people, this is no longer possible or desirable. Organized activities provide one avenue for bringing children safely together outside of school. For most children, one sports activity, like soccer, one artistic activity, like music lessons, and one social activity, like scouting, fill the bill. Some children may need more; some less. What is critical is that these activities do not monopolize the time and opportunities children have for spontaneous social play. Play dates can be helpful if the children are allowed to choose their own games and activities. It also makes sense for parents to alternate taking a group of friends to a playground where they can play their own games.

Ensuring that our children have a healthy amount of active individual and social play is made difficult by the ready availability of so many passive—and engaging—TV programs, videos, and computer games. This problem is complicated by our own busy schedules and time frames. Nonetheless, there are a number of ways to address this issue. First of all, it is important to buy toys which leave room for the imagination. Books, board games, playing cards, craft materials for drawing, painting, and modeling have withstood the test of time, unlike many of the toys on the market today. Secondly, it is essential to help children evaluate both advertising and programs. “Does that ad make sense to you?” and “Why do you like this TV program? Why not?” Engaging your children in discussions about advertising and media content is an important step in helping them become informed and critical viewers and consumers.

Finally, we need to practice what we preach. If we don’t want our children spending too much time on the computer, we should limit the time we ourselves spend surfing the net. If we want our children to be thoughtful consumers, we should model wise shopping practices. If we want our children to eat healthy, we should do likewise. As a general rule, we should not bring anything into our homes that we do not want our children to eat. Likewise, if we want our children to engage in regular physical exercise, we ourselves should, to illustrate, walk to venues that are within comfortable walking distance.

Healthy parenting is never easy, and each generation has its own unique challenges as well as those which parents of all generations have encountered. Today, our unique task is to ensure that our children have sufficient time and opportunity to engage in self-initiated individual and social play. To be sure, we can’t do all we would like to do in this regard. But because we can’t do it all does not mean that we can’t do anything. A little support for self-initiated play may not seem a lot to us, but it can mean a great deal to our children.

Dr. David Elkind is a psychologist and Professor Emeritus of Child Development at Tufts University. He is the author of many books, including The Hurried Child and The Power of Play, and he is recognized as the leading advocate in the nation for the preservation of childhood. He spoke in Winnetka in February, 2009 at an event co-sponsored by the Winnetka Alliance, Family Awareness Network, and North Shore Country Day School. This article was originally published in the Spring 2009 issue of Early Childhood.