Sometimes when life gets busy we forget to play. Playing can invoke feelings of guilt that are associated with not being productive. For some, taking time to play and doing something they enjoy can make them feel childish and lazy. What many do not know however is how truly important it is to balance their day with play. Play is essential health and wellbeing. It is involved in the development of the brain, strengthening relationships, and keeping our mental health in check. Play is a fundamental life process we cannot do without. It brings joy to day to day living on many levels. Current research shows us that the drive for play and sleep are found in the same area of the brain. This suggests that play is as crucial to our functioning as sleep throughout our lifespan. Stuart Brown, in his popular book Play: How it shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul, notes that the opposite of play is not work but depression. Read on to find a list of reasons why play is essential across the lifespan.
1. Play leads development. It helps children meet and exceed developmental milestones, giving them the opportunity to reach their full potential.
2. Play has an important role in learning and memory. It enhances the retention of knowledge.
3. Play triggers the release of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) which is essential for the growth of new brain cells, strengthening neural networks, and maintaining current ones. It plays a prominent role in how the brain develops.
4. Play helps to cultivate the areas of the brain responsible for attention, language skills, discriminating what information is relevant and what is not, monitoring and organizing thoughts and feelings, and planning for the future. Without the opportunity to play children are found to be handicapped in these skills and these deficits can last throughout the lifespan.
5. Frequent breaks for play at home and at school increase children’s attention span.
6. Play provides children a way to process and cope with life’s challenges.
7. Play develops and improves social skills.
8. Play, when it includes family or friends, increases a child’s sense of belonging.
9. Play helps children develop the ability to understand other’s points of view and through this they develop empathy.
10. Play teaches children about boundaries, cooperation, and teamwork.
11. Play develops and maintains a healthy self-concept, establishing and strengthening self-esteem and self-confidence.
12. Rough and tumble play facilitates the development of emotional regulation and cognitive
development.
13. Play facilitates the development of strong problem-solving skills and creativity.
14. Play provides children the opportunity to explore, learn lessons, practice skills, and make mistakes without being in danger.
15. Play paramount to a child’s ability to be flexible, adaptable, and to cope with small and large transitions.
16. Play increases a child’s resilience to meet future challenges.
17. Play helps children experience greater self-responsibility by allowing them a sense of control and mastery in their play.
18. Play helps parents tune into their child and understand who their child is. Play also helps parents know what their child’s needs are, what drives their child, and what interests their child about the world.
19. Play facilitates a strong bond between the parent and child that lasts throughout the lifespan.
20. Play makes parenting easier. The stronger bond helps a child feel important, understood, and accepted. This bond results in children responding more favorably to rules and structure put in place by parents. This strategy works for teachers too!
21. The brain is reorganizing itself and is in its second major stage of development during adolescence. As with infancy and childhood, play is every bit as important to the process of development including: creativity, motivation, enhancing performance, understanding the world, and finding oneself.
22. Play maintains strong parent-child bonds while adolescents start the process of differentiating from the family.
23. Play maintains a strong self-esteem and self-confidence that was developed in childhood.
For Adults:
24. Frequent play breaks helps adults focus better on the task at hand.
25. As with children, play continues to help adults make sense of their world and understand themselves better.
26. Play stimulates creativity.
27. Play relieves stress and has a positive effect on mental health.
28. Play increases joy and satisfaction in work and in life in general.
29. Play stimulates processing of dilemmas and challenges; it increases problem-solving abilities, and increases the number of possible solutions to a dilemma.
30. Play creates and maintains strong bonds in couple and parent-child relationships.
31. Play wards off Alzheimer’s and dementia by developing new neural connections and strengthening existing ones.
For Employers:
32. Play in the workplace increases productivity, develops higher job satisfaction, increases company morale, enhances the team environment, and decreases absenteeism.
If you have not played in a long time, you may have forgotten how. What follows is a brief list of pointers to understand what play is and how to engage in it either individually, with your family, or with peers.
1. Find something that brings you joy and lose yourself in it. If you are immersed in play you should feel like time is suspended and find it difficult to pull yourself away from the activity.
2. The activity you choose should be engaged in for the purpose of pleasure and not have a specific goal.
When engaging in play with children there are also several rules to keep in mind:
1. Be at your child’s eye level and follow them around.
2. Allow your child to choose the activity and direct how it should go. Please note: Videogames do not count as play.
3. Play with your child is not a time for lectures. If limits are needed they should only be used for the safety of people and objects. And, if limits are set they should only be set when needed.
4. As with adult play, there should not be a purpose in play except to enjoy each other and the activity. If you find yourself teaching or making the activity educational you are no longer playing.
5. Find something that brings you and your child joy and engage in it.
So if you choose to do anything for yourself and your family today choose play. In the words
of Stuart Brown “play is like fertilizer for brain growth. It’s crazy not to use it” (p. 101).
References
Brantton, S.C., Landreth, G. L., Kellam, T., & Blackard, S. R. (2006). Child Parent Relationship Therapy (CPRT) Treatment Manual: A 10-sesion filial therapy model for training parents. New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.
Greenspan, S.I. (1995). The Challenging Child: Understanding, raising, and enjoying the five “difficult” types of children. Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc.
Brown, S. (2009). Play: How it shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul. New York: Penguin Group.
© Coyright Sabrina Ragan M.Sc, CCC, CPT, RPsych
