Play is an essential part of our human experience. We are biologically hard wired for play. As are cats, dogs, rats, monkeys, elephants, lions, and even octopuses!
Babies/children of all races/genders invent and reinvent play over and over again without instruction.
Play teaches children about caring, creativity, helps them socially and supports thinking skills and brain development. Play is a child’s context for learning. Rough and tumble play has been shown to promote early brain development.
Play is extremely important for your baby. It goes beyond supporting their motor skills, but also helps baby learn how to make decisions and search for solutions. Play allows your baby to try new things, and feel the cause and effect of their actions. “If I drop this spoon off my tray it falls to the ground, weeee!”. “Hmm, this block is not fitting into the square hole, lets try this round hole”.
Play is an action system, and has a quality of exploration and spontaneity. Play is process oriented, does not have an end product, or a means to an end, it’s a being, not a doing.
Play encourages your baby to:
Meet challenges
Search for solutions
Develop their attention
Supports decision making
Helps them learn to imitate
Supports motor coordination
Play teaches your toddler/preschooler about:
social rules
practice for life; play house, play build, play make
supports motor coordination
social bonding
manages stress: especially rough and tumble play supports those feel good hormones to get released in our bodies.
sparks creativity~ big time!
problem solving
spatial reasoning and logic
healthy brain development
resolve conflicts
sharing
strengthens relationships
improves intelligence
promotes impulse control and emotional regulation
better physical health and mental health
great for life lessons!
It’s also an opportunity to find real connection with your baby/child
For some of us, play does not come naturally, it’s hard and painful and not very enjoyable.
Here’s some ideas on how to come into connection and play with your child.
· Slow your pace down to your child’s pace. For a baby this is at least 10x slower than your adult pace.
· Be curious about what they are learning, tune in
· Let your baby/child lead the way with play, even when you think you have a better idea. Enter their world of magic and see if you can learn something from them.
· Get out of the way and watch, wait and wonder.
Your best toy for your baby is your face, your best toy for your child is you!
And of course, toys are fun to play with. When purchasing a toy, try to buy toys that are open ended. Open ended toys are those that can be played with in a variety of ways.
This block can be a bridge, a wand, a sword, a gate, a bed, a door and many more things.
Open ended toys are 90% child and 10% toy. Let the child do the creating, not the toy!
This leaves space for a child’s input, imagination, problem solving and creativity.
Children need to be able to follow their own impulses, interests and instincts through play. They get to discover what interests them, what they are curious about, and what they want to learn about, and we get the opportunity to support them in their burgeoning desires and interests.
This creates children who are confident, passionate about life and have the self esteem to move forward and go for what they want in life with a sense of purpose.
