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:
children’s play.
Play is vitally important to children, not just to their social and emotional development, but to their
academic achievement as well. Besides just being fun, play is the way that children make the
world their own, make sense of all their new experiences and knowledge, and recover from life’s
upsets. They need as much of it as they can get, even if it doesn’t look like it’s “constructive.”
Developmentally, young children need lots of time to run around, to act goofy, to not have to be
anywhere at any given time, to play endless games of Barbie, or fantasy dress-up games, or what
I call disorganized sports, where children get to argue about the rules and work out conflicts and
figure out fairness and decide for themselves whether to keep score or not.
And I’m 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, can
interfere with that. If they are pushing themselves, and most students are, then they especially
need 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 that
this will enhance their student’s cognitive, social, and physical development. But they often find
themselves on the defensive. Parents and administrators may view anything that isn’t on the test
or in the curriculum as a waste of time. One teacher told me that when she dared to bring up the
question of whether a child was happy, the parent said: “Happy doesn’t get you into Harvard.”
We are well past the idea that children just need facts drummed into them. We want our children
to be creative, imaginative, flexible thinkers. In that case, play is crucial — in school and out of
school. 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 and
other types of play should be incorporated into the curriculum at every level. The trend, these
days, seems to be in the opposite direction. Even in kindergarten, where play is of such obvious
importance, it is steadily being replaced by “more important things.” In fact, I first began to be
alarmed about this topic when I heard about some kindergarten classes that were skipping recess
because they were behind in the curriculum.
A recent study found that people remember new information better if they get a chance to sleep
after they learn it. I would bet anything that the same result would be found for playing, because
play is how children integrate what they learn.
We know that preschool children learn about the world by playing at the water table or in the
sandbox or in the doll corner. They learn more, faster, than at any other time in their lives. Why
should the methods of teaching change so dramatically as soon as children hit the primary
grades? Luckily, independent schools have been spared the worst ravages of the standardized
testing push, which along with budget cuts has resulted in a dramatic decline in play and other
“nonessential” activities. Independent schools have also been at the forefront of developmental
education, which usually comes along with an understanding of the value of play in the
classroom. But even in independent schools — with all the pressure of getting to the next level —
play is in danger of becoming marginalized.
Instead of being shortened or eliminated, recess needs to be lengthened and staffed with a
greater number of caring adults. And I always urge teachers not to make children miss recess as
a punishment for not doing their homework or for misbehaving — these are often the children
most 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 they
need to stop being so self-centered.
School is hard for many children. It may be hard academically, socially, emotionally, or in some
combination of the three. Some children are anxious about grades, others about peers. Some are
upset about what’s 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 they
might make up dramatic games where they slay dragons. They might play at sports or seek out
one-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 don’t get much chance to play. I am
a strong advocate for less homework, but only if the extra time is spent really playing, not sitting
down in front of the TV or the computer. These screens do not provide the kind of playfulness and
interactions that children need.
Besides academic stress, children face pressure to grow up too fast. Preteens want to be
teenagers, 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 might
otherwise keep them separate — lines of sex, race, class, physical differences, etc. When boys
and girls play together, for example, they are forced to be more creative in their play. Since girls
usually aren’t so interested in blowing up bad guys, and boys are usually bored with dressing up
dolls, they have to find new activities that work for both parties. Similarly, if there is a language or
cultural barrier, children cross it best with games that involve running around acting silly, or
playing dress-up, or kicking a soccer ball, or drawing, not with games that are based on TV
shows or movies or the latest toys.
So one big way to promote playfulness is to model it at school. Make time for play, in the
classroom 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 is
to get caught up in homework power struggles, which only increase anxiety and strife and take
away from playtime. Ask parents how much downtime the child gets. How much running-around
time? Some children need more of one than the other; most children don’t get enough of either
one. Parents often fail to realize the importance of playing with children of all ages. Some new
research, for example, by Anthony Pellegrini, suggests that boys who engage in playful rough
and tumble wrestling with their dads have more positive social skills than boys who don’t. I
always recommend what I call PlayTime, which is one-on-one time between a parent and a child
where the child is completely in charge of what they do, and the parent gets down on the floor
and gives their undivided, enthusiastic attention (no phone calls or dinner preparations or paying
the 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 while
they last.
I feel strongly that a lot of the children — mainly boys — whom we diagnose with attention
disorders really have attachment disorders. They don’t have enough closeness time with their
parents or anyone else, and that makes it hard to focus and concentrate and control their
impulses. Meanwhile, the popular culture steps in to fill the gap where a secure attachment ought
to be. I have seen boys in therapy who improved dramatically just because, instead of taking the
bus, their father started driving them to school.
Another thing schools can do is help organize or facilitate family playtime. The sixth grade at my
daughter’s school, for instance, just had a parents-versus-children volleyball match, followed by a
potluck supper. Some adults and children need a jump-start like that in order to see how fun it
can 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 in
my voice, “Play is what will get your children into Ivy League schools.” Of course, I can’t
guarantee that, but I do know that play does help with children’s cognitive development at every
level, from preschool to adulthood. Naturally, most parents don’t believe me. However, they
usually either laugh or they are taken aback for a minute, so I consider that a step in the right
direction.
I recently spoke with Kay Cowan, head of the Nashoba-Brooks School (Massachusetts), about
ways schools can help parents lighten up. As the head of an elementary school, she said she
sees the most parental anxiety around the issue of secondary-school placement. “It has become
so 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, isn’t enough any more. The child has to be a soccer player who has reached the state
championship, or a cellist playing with some renowned group. That puts enormous pressure on
the child and the family. I see an escalation, where a wonderful profile for a child five years ago is
not enough today.
“The same thing is happening in kindergarten or pre-K. We feel terrible turning down wonderfully
qualified children, and parents whom you would love to have in the school. So how do you
decide?”
Cowan describes how she tries to promote a playful attitude at school, and how she tries to
encourage steps to reduce stress at home. She talks to parents a great deal about child
development, and encourages her teachers to do the same. She also acknowledges that it isn’t
usually a tough sell, because there is some self-selection: “If the parents want their child to study
Suzuki during recess, they know this isn’t the school for them.”
Cowan also talks to parents, individually and in school-wide meetings, about children’s afterschool 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 don’t understand that
children need down time, play time, fun time, unpressured time. She recommends that the whole
summer be down time, instead of six weeks at Violin-Soccer-Mountaineering-SAT Prep Camp. As
she 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 of
different 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 sleep
and exercise and water, she gets her highly educated audience’s attention. Of course, there is
not much neuroscience research on play and children’s brains, since play is the poor relation of
child development. But there are plenty enough data from generations of teachers and clinicians
and careful observers of children’s play to convince us.
Nashoba-Brooks, like many schools, understands the importance of play. They have put a great
deal of thought into how to promote those intangibles, such as happiness, by fostering an
environment based on trust and safety, for example, where children and adults listen to one
another. The school makes sure teachers understand child development — and that students
need time to cuddle, to play, to sprawl on the floor every school day, not just on special
occasions.
More specifically, the school has a half-hour of recess in the morning, and 20 minutes in the
afternoon, and it is never skipped.
At events like the school choral concert, the focus is on the children learning and growing, rather
than on a level of professionalism that would be developmentally inappropriate. “It may not blow
your socks off if you are expecting a Broadway show,” Cowan acknowledges, “but the adults in
the 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 and
overworked and undervalued. Parents, meanwhile, are pretty much in the same boat, except for
not being paid at all and constantly hearing lip-service to the idea that theirs is “the most
important job in the world.” What children do most and best, namely play, isn’t valued very highly
in our society either. Instead, each of these groups is under a lot of pressure, and it’s
understandable 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 the
author of Playful Parenting: A Bold New Way to Nurture Close Connections, Solve Behavior
Problems, and Encourage Children’s Confidence, and coauthor, along with Michael Thompson
and Catherine O’Neill Grace, of Best Friends, Worst Enemies. He also writes a column for The
Boston Globe. The rest of the time he spends playing.