{"id":1374,"date":"2014-04-15T11:00:42","date_gmt":"2014-04-15T15:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.janice-campbell.com\/?p=1374"},"modified":"2020-02-03T19:34:21","modified_gmt":"2020-02-03T19:34:21","slug":"play-is-a-childs-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doingwhatmatters.com\/play-is-a-childs-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Play is a Child’s Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

Deep meaning lies often in childish play.<\/em><\/strong>
\n-Johann Friedrich von Schiller<\/p>\n

\"Play<\/a><\/p>\n

The outdoors used to be a place where children could run, play, build, create, and do the mildly hazardous things children love to do. I remember walking the 5′ high cinderblock wall that ran like a vertebrae down the center of our block, jumping repeatedly from the garage roof \u00a0(the lowest side, of course) so I could\u00a0learn to land lightly, climbing trees to read\u00a0a good book, using scrap lumber and other discarded material to build a fort in a neglected corner of land next to the\u00a0freeway across the street from our home, and countless other adventures that would make many adults wince. And I wasn’t even a particularly adventuresome kid.<\/p>\n

What’s happened to play?<\/h2>\n

Things have changed a lot, though. Children rarely seem to have the freedom to roam and play independently, and this is not a good thing. Hanna Rosin’s article, The Overprotected Kid<\/strong><\/a>, in the March issue of The Atlantic<\/em><\/a>, is a fascinating look at what has happened to child’s play, and how it is affecting the development of significant skills.\u00a0One chilling\u00a0article in the Washington Post observes the decline of play in preschoolers \u2014 and the simultaneous rise in sensory issues<\/a>. Play matters.<\/p>\n

Sometimes it takes an outsider to diagnose an ailing culture. Even though “play\u00a0<\/i>been demonstrated to improve academic performance, behavior, mental and physical health in children,” filmmaker Erin Davis suggests that America’s\u00a0obsession with litigation, and “the rejection of any activity that does not have an immediate, quantifiable value” makes it more difficult to provide public adventure playgrounds. I don’t think it would be unfair to say that the\u00a0disappearance of play boils down to money \u2014 the fear of losing it through lawsuits and the fear of\u00a0want due to not competing hard enough.<\/p>\n

It’s not easy to combat such short-sightedness. Charlotte Mason would be appalled. She advocated ample time outdoors, and with good reason. Here’s what she suggests:<\/p>\n

In this time of extraordinary pressure, educational and social,
\nperhaps a mother’s first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet growing time,
\na full six years of passive receptive life, the waking part of it spent for the most part out in the fresh air.
\nAnd this, not for the gain in bodily health alone\u00a0\u2014 body and soul, heart and mind, are nourished
\nwith food convenient for them when the children are let alone,
\nlet to live without friction and without stimulus amongst happy influences which incline them to be good.”
\n(Volume 1, page 43<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/a>

My boys wore Two Little Savages to shreds, taking it outside for inspiration and diagrams.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"She goes on to emphasize that “They must be let alone, left to themselves a great deal, to take in what they can of the beauty of earth and heavens; for of the evils of modern education few are worse than this \u2014 that the perpetual cackle of his elders leaves the poor child not a moment of time, nor an inch of space, wherein to wonder \u2014 and grow.” Honestly, there have been times I wanted to frame this quote and give it as a gift. It\u00a0is not conventional wisdom to value the observation and thinking of a child, but\u00a0children are persons, and they need space and time in which to simply be.<\/p>\n

The emergence of adventure playgrounds<\/h3>\n

An adventure playground can offer over-sheltered children the opportunity to do real things in an environment that combines nature (trees, mud, etc.) with some of the detritus of life (discarded building materials, furniture, tools, etc.). According to Rosin’s article<\/a>, adventure parks came into being in post-WWII Britain. They were very different from earlier playgrounds, but consistent with cultural expectations after the war. It seemed reasonable that “Children who might grow up to fight wars were not shielded from danger; they were expected to meet it with assertiveness and even bravado.”<\/p>\n

In these playgrounds, children\u00a0are able to climb, dig, build, pretend, deconstruct, contemplate, and more. And in so doing, they learn. They don’t just develop skills that help them do adult things later, they also learn about justice and mercy, and how to use their hands and bodies to accomplish goals and tasks without getting hurt. They learn to make decisions, and what to do if those decisions don’t work as well as they hoped.\u00a0It has been said that play is a child’s work, and without doubt, it is where a tremendous amount of learning occurs.<\/p>\n

The Land: An Adventure Play Documentary<\/h4>\n

If you’re too young to remember adventurous real-time play, this trailer for The Land<\/em><\/a> will give you an idea of what free play looked like in the twentieth century and earlier. You’ll see children experiencing\u00a0the delight of having time, space, and materials to work with, far from\u00a0the “perpetual cackle of his elders.”<\/p>\n