29 Oct 2008
I loved playing outdoors as a child. Digging to China, swinging on a knotted rope in the woods with friends, and playing alone in my secret space -- a little culvert with a trickle of water surrounded by bushes. For me it was a waterfall in a remote forest.
Sharing memories of childhood play with others is a powerful way to reconnect to the child who communed with nature and needed so little to be deeply satisfied. It's enlightening to do this with family, friends, co-workers, and young people.
I've noticed that some people in their teens and twenties have had a very different experience of play than my friends and I did. Their childhoods were full of electronic entertainment, organized sports, and other structured activities. They didn't hang out with a crowd of children and organize their own games, adapting the rules as they went along. They weren't allowed to climb trees, hang rope swings, build forts or tree houses. Rarely do they speak of a secret space. Childhood has become adult-run, with little time for child-initiated play.
What is play, anyway? Playworkers in the U.K., a band of quirky professionals dedicated to supporting children's play, give this definition: Play is a set of behaviors that are freely chosen, personally directed, and intrinsically motivated. Play bubbles up from inside. With young children, parents are usually close at hand. In previous generations, elementary-school-age children generally played outdoors with adults in the vicinity but generally invisible.
One father asked his daughter what she thought play was. "It's what we do when the grown-ups aren't around," she said.
Today it's hard to give children this kind of freedom. Rightly or wrongly, adults are fearful that something terrible will happen. But it's still possible for adults to encourage and support free play without dominating it. Those British playworkers talk about wearing a "cloak of invisibility" while they are in the presence of playing children.
We can help children find or create simple spaces for play and make sure there are open-ended materials at hand -- sticks and stones, earth and water -- so that children can build a car one day or a mud village the next. When it comes to play materials, the simpler the better. Each object can have a hundred uses.
Play has lost much ground in recent years. Yet it is vital for every aspect of a child's development. For four years the Alliance for Childhood has worked with others to restore free play, and we've seen wonderful progress. We work with parks departments, zoos, children's museums, PTAs, and many others. We introduce them to the profession of playwork and help them form play coalitions. We help distribute a PBS documentary on play, "Where Do the Children Play?" for public screenings. Our newest project is to restore play and experiential learning in kindergartens.
We're thrilled there are so many efforts, like Green Hour, to help children reconnect with play and nature. It feels as if we're all working to remove children's shackles so they can run outside and play.
 Joan Almon, of College Park, Md., is Director of the U.S. Alliance for
Childhood, author of many articles and chapters on play, and is an international
consultant on early childhood education. She is also the former co-chair of the Waldorf
Early Childhood Association of North America. |
