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surveys: the classroom?
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What happens there? How do parents feel about their children’s play and how do they support it? Or do they impede it, either intentionally or unwittingly? How can you encourage parents to incorporate regular doses of healthy, constructive, and fun play into their children’s lives outside
■ Almost half (47%) say that our educational system is too gradeoriented and too competitive (Applied
Research & Consulting, 1999).
If you are committed to play-based learning in early childhood, this sounds like good news. It implies that you can expect understanding of and support for your approach, and generous reinforceLet’s take a look at how today’s parents feel about play, as reported in recent ment of it at home.
Not so fast, says Dr. Michael Cohen, president of Applied Research & Consulting, whose company conducted the survey that teased out these findings.
According to Cohen, there is another side to the story. Nearly three-fourths (72%) of parents believe early academic learning is important and over half strongly
■ Most parents (91%) believe play is an important contributor to their children’s development and well-being.
■ Almost a quarter of them (21%) believe that their children have less time to enjoy play than they did as a child.
believe that academic success is essential for life success. These numbers suggest that parents will make choices — sometimes misguided — that they feel will promote school performance. “While parents believe in the importance of play,” notes
Cohen, “they make decisions that sacrifice play in the hopes of academic success for their children. As a result, parents may be denying their children the opportunity to achieve balance and happiness in years to come” (www.kidsource.com).
Another survey, commissioned collaboratively by Civitas, Brio Corporation, and
Susan Oliver is executive director of the national non-profit organization Playing for Keeps . She devotes her time to promoting and protecting the role of play in our culture. Prior to her association with Playing for Keeps , Ms.
Oliver served in various positions at the
National Lekotek Center, a national non-profit organization dedicated to making play accessible to children with disabilities and the Family Resource
Coalition of America, a national nonprofit organization committed to building community-based support and resources for children and families.
Edgar Klugman is the co-founder of Playing for Keeps as well as professor emeritus of
Early Childhood
Education and Care at Wheelock College in Boston, Massachusetts. He is also a charter member of the Play, Policy, and
Practice Interest Forum within the
National Association for the Education of
Young Children (NAEYC). Among his publications are Play, Policy and Practice
(Redleaf Press), and Children’s Play and
Learning: Perspectives and Policy Implications (edited with Smilansky; Teachers
College Press). He currently serves on the board of New England AEYC.

Zero to Three in 2000, found that parents do see a connection between play and learning, though they tend to believe that play has more impact on social development than on the development of intellectual and language skills. They also tend to feel that play is more beneficial for older children (three to five year olds) than for babies. Many believe that activities such as flashcards
(65% of parents), watching educational television (64%), and solitary play on the computer (45%) are beneficial free time activities for children (DYG, 2000).
If you are committed to play-based learning in your classroom, you may experience some of these mixed messages from parents about the value they place on play and how they support it at home. In your role as trusted caregiver and educator, however, many parents probably look to you for information about their child’s development.
You are in a unique position to impact the decisions they make about how they structure their child’s time and access to healthy play when they go home.
Some preschoolers have schedules that would exhaust even the more energetic among us — full or part days spent in child care or preschool, followed by lessons, classes, play dates, visits to libraries and museums, and more — all priorities of capable, well-meaning parents. Other preschoolers may have a lighter calendar, but significant portions of their days are spent in front of a screen — usually a television — in passive activity. (A recent study found that the average American home with a toddler has the television on for six hours a day; the average two year old spends more than four hours a day in front of a screen; and one in six twoyear-old children have a television set in the bedroom [Jordan, & Woodard,
2001].)
It’s easy to be nostalgic about the simpler, more carefree, more playful, less electronic childhoods of yesteryear (i.e., the ones we experienced, perhaps romanticized), and to shake our heads at parents who don’t make something similar available to their children. However, your experience as an early childhood educator has no doubt shown you that many parents try to make the best decisions they know how for their children and they are eager for helpful information and perspectives.
How can you encourage parents to make more playtime available to their children?
Here are a few ideas:
■
Encourage parents to stop and think about their child’s play.
Ask them to reflect on when the child gets to play and under what circumstances. Is it part of the regular routine, or a special reward for accomplishments or “good” behavior? Is it always facilitated, or does the child have free play time? Is it always the same kind of play (e.g. outdoor play using gross motor skills), or is a range of play included in the child’s repertoire? Does the child have time to be just a kid ?
One of the messages you can give parents is a simple and reinforcing one: that providing healthy play time for their child is one of the best things they can give him or her. Doing so reflects good parenting.
■
Make resources about play available to parents.
If you don’t already do so, start a file of books, articles, and web sites that are informative about the value of play.
Send information about the value of play home on a regular basis.
Why? Play is a natural way for children to explore, learn, and try new skills and it is easy to do as a family or for children alone or together. It’s a way for any and all parents to be involved in their child’s learning because it doesn’t require any special resources, money, educational background, or skills. Any parent can play with his or her child, and any parent can make play available to a child.
Moreover, it adds to the quality of life.
As an early childhood educator or caregiver, remember that you are the expert who can guide parents in finding their own playful selves — and show them how to understand the outcomes and milestones their children reach by playing. Your goal should be to help the parents of the children in your care to become your co-experts on the importance of play.
You can find a list of books on play on the
Playing for Keeps web site — including some with specific ideas for play activities at various ages — at www.playingforkeeps.org, along with lots of other information and resources about play for parents. Articles about the importance of play often appear in journals such as Child
Care Information Exchange and Young
Children. (Young Children is published by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. Check out the May
2003 issue, which is devoted to the topic of play.) In addition to the Playing for
Keeps web site, many parenting web sites include information on the importance of play, as do web sites of toy trade associations, some toy companies, and toy award programs. The Playing for Keeps web site also has a colorful and downloadable
Family Guide to play, or you can request one by calling (877) 755-5347.
Keep in mind that over the course of your relationship with parents, you typically have many opportunities to influence their choices — and it may be better to break

information into smaller, digestible pieces to fit their busy lives. Don’t forget that there are many points of contact for dispensing information, and you can use them all in different ways to bring the message of play to parents. Many centers will have the following channels of communication available to reach parents:
• Drop off and pick up times
• Signage in your classroom
• Messages on sign-in and sign-out charts
• Backpack stuffers
• Parent meetings
• Parent conferences
• Newsletters
• Your school’s web site
■
Help parents understand that there are many types of play.
At Playing for
Keeps, we believe in what we call a
“balanced diet of play.” Children need all types of play to thrive and learn, including play that stimulates the development of gross motor muscles and skills, fine motor muscles and skills, cognitive capacity, the imagination, sensory perception skills, and social skills. This gives parents a wide range of possibilities for bringing play into their child’s life, including:
• Different playmate configurations (play as a family, play with friends, solitary play)
• Different play settings (indoors, outdoors, at home, at a friend’s home, in institutions such as museums or parks)
• Different types of activities (running, jumping, and other physical play; arts and crafts; make believe; exploring; experimenting; and much more).
The important message for parents is that many people in their children’s lives are potential play partners (parents, grandparents, other relatives, friends), and many venues and situations are great places to play (in the car, while waiting in line at the grocery store, at the doctor’s office). Because the range of healthy play is so broad, there are likely to be activities that suit everyone’s needs, interests, availability, schedule, and mood. There is no one right play “diet” for any child or family, nor one right way to play.
■
Build parents’ confidence in their child’s playful nature.
Our culture tends to view play as the opposite of academic accomplishment, rather than as a means to getting there. Many parents include lots of interaction with their child as a measure of good parenting — along with making lots of enrichment activities available to their child. While these are commendable values in moderation, you can encourage parents to provide unstructured time for children by assuring them that nature has equipped the child to use it well. Play, it is often said, is a child’s work — work that comes naturally to the child.
■ Urge parents to believe in their own instincts and creativity.
By believing in play and making it available to their child, parents will probably find a longneglected playful side of themselves.
Even the busiest parents or those least inclined to play may find themselves opening up to the joys of play and creating fun activities for the whole family.
Encourage parents to connect with each other by sharing new and old discoveries and recipes for good fun at home, in the backyard, and in the neighborhood.
■
Help parents see the value in minimizing structured activities.
You know some of the signs of an over-committed or over-stimulated child from your experience in the classroom: moodiness, fatigue, physical complaints like headaches or stomach problems despite no apparent illness, hair-trigger temper or frustration points, and withdrawal. Make sure parents understand that some of their child’s behavior problems may be resulting from too much stimulation and expectations that do not fit the child’s developmental level. Reassure parents that eliminating structured activities — even just one per week — and replacing it with healthy play time will be as beneficial to the child as the lesson or the sports team that is stressing the entire family.
By helping parents embrace the promise of play, you will have an important and positive impact on children beyond the boundaries of your classroom. Happily enough, your commitment to a playbased learning environment — designed to promote healthy development and to contribute to creative, well-adjusted, educated children — will help increase joy and learning at home and in the community. You will be giving a great gift, indeed, to children and their families — and their future.
Applied Research & Consulting (1999).
Statistics from a telephone survey of a randomly selected sample of 400 parents nationwide. See www.kidsource.com/kidsource/ content5/studies.play.html.
DYG (2000). Statistics from a telephone survey of a randomly selected sample of 3,000 adults nationwide titled What
Grown-Ups Understand about Child
Development: A national benchmark survey.
See www.civitas.org to order study.
Jordan, A. B., & Woodard, IV, E. H.
(October/November 2001). “Electronic
Childhood: The Availability and Use of Household Media by
2-to-3-Year-Olds.” Bulletin of ZERO TO
THREE, 22 (2) . Washington, DC: Zero to Three.