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Promoting Play --At School and Home

By Lawrence Cohen

With all the emphasis these days on standardized test scores, grades, advanced curricula,extracurricular activities, and longer school days, something very important is being left out:

childrens play.

Play is vitally important to children, not just to their social and emotional development, but to theiracademic achievement as well. Besides just being fun, play is the way that children make theworld their own, make sense of all their new experiences and knowledge, and recover from lifesupsets. They need as much of it as they can get, even if it doesnt look like its constructive.Developmentally, young children need lots of time to run around, to act goofy, to not have to beanywhere at any given time, to play endless games of Barbie, or fantasy dress-up games, or whatI call disorganized sports, where children get to argue about the rules and work out conflicts andfigure out fairness and decide for themselves whether to keep score or not.

And Im not just talking about elementary-school children. Older children and teenagers,developmentally speaking, need hanging out time. Their developmental task is to figure out who

they are, and all the pressures to be involved in and excel in 17 different things, caninterfere with that. If they are pushing themselves, and most students are, then they especiallyneed down time to recover their strength and energy for the next push.

Many teachers include (or would like to include) play activities in their classrooms, knowing thatthis will enhance their students cognitive, social, and physical development. But they often findthemselves on the defensive. Parents and administrators may view anything that isnt on the testor in the curriculum as a waste of time. One teacher told me that when she dared to bring up thequestion of whether a child was happy, the parent said: Happy doesnt get you into Harvard.

We are well past the idea that children just need facts drummed into them. We want our childrento be creative, imaginative, flexible thinkers. In that case, play is crucial in school and out ofschool. But even if we only cared about our children getting good grades and getting into a good

college, I would still argue for a greater amount of play. I believe that more dramatic play andother types of play should be incorporated into the curriculum at every level. The trend, thesedays, seems to be in the opposite direction. Even in kindergarten, where play is of such obviousimportance, it is steadily being replaced by more important things. In fact, I first began to bealarmed about this topic when I heard about some kindergarten classes that were skipping recessbecause they were behind in the curriculum.

A recent study found that people remember new information better if they get a chance to sleepafter they learn it. I would bet anything that the same result would be found for playing, becauseplay is how children integrate what they learn.

We know that preschool children learn about the world by playing at the water table or in thesandbox or in the doll corner. They learn more, faster, than at any other time in their lives. Whyshould the methods of teaching change so dramatically as soon as children hit the primarygrades? Luckily, independent schools have been spared the worst ravages of the standardizedtesting push, which along with budget cuts has resulted in a dramatic decline in play and othernonessential activities. Independent schools have also been at the forefront of developmentaleducation, which usually comes along with an understanding of the value of play in theclassroom. But even in independent schools with all the pressure of getting to the next level play is in danger of becoming marginalized.

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Instead of being shortened or eliminated, recess needs to be lengthened and staffed with agreater number of caring adults. And I always urge teachers not to make children miss recess asa punishment for not doing their homework or for misbehaving these are often the childrenmost in need of the chance to run around and play. Instead, make children do community service,or push ups, or run laps, depending on whether they need to get rid of excess energy or theyneed to stop being so self-centered.

School is hard for many children. It may be hard academically, socially, emotionally, or in somecombination of the three. Some children are anxious about grades, others about peers. Some areupset about whats happening at home. In order to recover from these worries and pressures small or large children need to play after school. Young children might play school, or theymight make up dramatic games where they slay dragons. They might play at sports or seek outone-on-one time with a parent to soak up some of that individual attention every child needs.

Some children spend so many hours on homework that they dont get much chance to play. I ama strong advocate for less homework, but only if the extra time is spent really playing, not sittingdown in front of the TV or the computer. These screens do not provide the kind of playfulness andinteractions that children need.

Besides academic stress, children face pressure to grow up too fast. Preteens want to beteenagers, teenagers want to be adults. Play is an antidote to this type of pressure. By playing,children have a chance to be children. Play is also the way that children cross lines that mightotherwise keep them separate lines of sex, race, class, physical differences, etc. When boysand girls play together, for example, they are forced to be more creative in their play. Since girlsusually arent so interested in blowing up bad guys, and boys are usually bored with dressing updolls, they have to find new activities that work for both parties. Similarly, if there is a language orcultural barrier, children cross it best with games that involve running around acting silly, orplaying dress-up, or kicking a soccer ball, or drawing, not with games that are based on TVshows or movies or the latest toys.

So one big way to promote playfulness is to model it at school. Make time for play, in theclassroom and out. Listen to your school. Is there laughter ringing in the halls? Look at the walls

and trophy cases. Do you reward other things besides academic and athletic success?

The next step for teachers is to advocate more playfulness at home. The tendency for parents isto get caught up in homework power struggles, which only increase anxiety and strife and takeaway from playtime. Ask parents how much downtime the child gets. How much running-aroundtime? Some children need more of one than the other; most children dont get enough of eitherone. Parents often fail to realize the importance of playing with children of all ages. Some newresearch, for example, by Anthony Pellegrini, suggests that boys who engage in playful roughand tumble wrestling with their dads have more positive social skills than boys who dont. Ialways recommend what I call PlayTime, which is one-on-one time between a parent and a childwhere the child is completely in charge of what they do, and the parent gets down on the floorand gives their undivided, enthusiastic attention (no phone calls or dinner preparations or payingthe bills). Older kids may want to use this time to make you do things you hate to do, like hang

out at the mall or listen to their music or teach them how to drive, so enjoy those moments whilethey last.

I feel strongly that a lot of the children mainly boys whom we diagnose with attentiondisorders really have attachment disorders. They dont have enough closeness time with theirparents or anyone else, and that makes it hard to focus and concentrate and control theirimpulses. Meanwhile, the popular culture steps in to fill the gap where a secure attachment oughtto be. I have seen boys in therapy who improved dramatically just because, instead of taking thebus, their father started driving them to school.

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Another thing schools can do is help organize or facilitate family playtime. The sixth grade at mydaughters school, for instance, just had a parents-versus-children volleyball match, followed by apotluck supper. Some adults and children need a jump-start like that in order to see how fun itcan be to play together.

Advocating for play at home and at school, one has to be prepared for the pointed questions

from parents about wasting time. For those parents, I like to say, with complete confidence inmy voice, Play is what will get your children into Ivy League schools. Of course, I cantguarantee that, but I do know that play does help with childrens cognitive development at everylevel, from preschool to adulthood. Naturally, most parents dont believe me. However, theyusually either laugh or they are taken aback for a minute, so I consider that a step in the rightdirection.

I recently spoke with Kay Cowan, head of the Nashoba-Brooks School (Massachusetts), aboutways schools can help parents lighten up. As the head of an elementary school, she said shesees the most parental anxiety around the issue of secondary-school placement. It has becomeso competitive that most schools have

a ten-to-one ratio of applicants to openings. So to get into the right school, one has to have

more than every other child. The result is that being a good student, a good citizen, a well-read,nice kid, isnt enough any more. The child has to be a soccer player who has reached the statechampionship, or a cellist playing with some renowned group. That puts enormous pressure onthe child and the family. I see an escalation, where a wonderful profile for a child five years ago isnot enough today.

The same thing is happening in kindergarten or pre-K. We feel terrible turning down wonderfullyqualified children, and parents whom you would love to have in the school. So how do youdecide?

Cowan describes how she tries to promote a playful attitude at school, and how she tries toencourage steps to reduce stress at home. She talks to parents a great deal about childdevelopment, and encourages her teachers to do the same. She also acknowledges that it isnt

usually a tough sell, because there is some self-selection: If the parents want their child to studySuzuki during recess, they know this isnt the school for them.

Cowan also talks to parents, individually and in school-wide meetings, about childrens after-school schedules. She told me she tries to recommend that they choose only one special thing,because of the homework requirements, but also because parents often dont understand thatchildren need down time, play time, fun time, unpressured time. She recommends that the wholesummer be down time, instead of six weeks at Violin-Soccer-Mountaineering-SAT Prep Camp. Asshe says, Every year, I talk to parents at curriculum night about how play is the work of children.Many parents, she admits, take little heed of this advice, scheduling their children for a lot ofdifferent activities anyway. Some suffer from it.

However, she did say that parents are more inclined to listen when she quotes recent

neuroscience research. If she can point to studies that report that the growing brain needs sleepand exercise and water, she gets her highly educated audiences attention. Of course, there isnot much neuroscience research on play and childrens brains, since play is the poor relation ofchild development. But there are plenty enough data from generations of teachers and cliniciansand careful observers of childrens play to convince us.

Nashoba-Brooks, like many schools, understands the importance of play. They have put a greatdeal of thought into how to promote those intangibles, such as happiness, by fostering anenvironment based on trust and safety, for example, where children and adults listen to one

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another. The school makes sure teachers understand child development and that studentsneed time to cuddle, to play, to sprawl on the floor every school day, not just on specialoccasions.

More specifically, the school has a half-hour of recess in the morning, and 20 minutes in theafternoon, and it is never skipped.

At events like the school choral concert, the focus is on the children learning and growing, ratherthan on a level of professionalism that would be developmentally inappropriate. It may not blowyour socks off if you are expecting a Broadway show, Cowan acknowledges, but the adults inthe audience thoroughly enjoy the high quality show, and the kids have fun.

Except for a few Neanderthals out there, we all know that teachers are underpaid andoverworked and undervalued. Parents, meanwhile, are pretty much in the same boat, except fornot being paid at all and constantly hearing lip-service to the idea that theirs is the mostimportant job in the world. What children do most and best, namely play, isnt valued very highlyin our society either. Instead, each of these groups is under a lot of pressure, and itsunderstandable that anxiety levels are high. We can all use some help in lightening up.

Go out and play!

Lawrence Cohen is a psychologist in private practice in Brookline, Massachusetts. He is theauthor ofPlayful Parenting: A Bold New Way to Nurture Close Connections, Solve BehaviorProblems, and Encourage Childrens Confidence, and coauthor, along with Michael Thompsonand Catherine ONeill Grace, ofBest Friends, Worst Enemies. He also writes a column forTheBoston Globe. The rest of the time he spends playing.