| For young children, play is not secondary to their education, play is their education. It is of utmost importance to social, emotional, and cognitive development, and, as a Reggio Emilia-inspired preschool, we hold it at the center of everything we do. Giving children opportunities for prolonged and self-directed play is more important than ever in today’s society. Many kindergarten and elementary school educators are making similar observations– children post-pandemic have a general lack of self-regulatory skills, are less able to handle delayed gratification, and are complaining of being “bored” at school. Beyond elementary schools, adolescents are more depressed and anxious than ever recorded, and parents and teachers are at a loss. What role does play have in affecting the self-regulatory skills of children? In The Role of Play in Development, Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky characterizes children’s play as activity that is (a) “desired” by the child, (b) “always involves an imaginary situation,” and (c) “always involves rules” which are usually made up on the spot by one or more of the children. Vygotsky argues that play is the first activity in which children are driven not by their need for instant gratification, but instead by the need to suppress their immediate impulses. He states, “Play continually creates demands on the child to act against immediate impulse, i.e., to act according to the line of greatest resistance. I want to run off at once—this is perfectly clear—but the rules of the game order me to wait. Why does the child not do what he wants, spontaneously and at once? Because to observe the rules of the play structure promises much greater pleasure from the game than the gratification of an immediate impulse.” If you’ve ever watched a child or group of children play, there are endless self-imposed rules and scenarios which live primarily in the child’s head. While playing, children are learning skills of self-regulation– waiting, communicating, listening. Here’s an example of some play I observed in the 3’s class earlier this month: “Okay, pretend we’re bears and there’s a storm, but this is the cave and when we’re in the cave, we’re safe. But we have to get berries to eat but we need to wait until the storm goes away.” As the game continued, the rules grew ever longer and children negotiated together very seriously (with some frustration when the play wasn’t going the way a certain child wanted). They continued talking, listening, and problem solving and eventually split into two groups so they could play their own way. I don’t want to gloss over just how much children learn from play such as this. Without being aware of it, these children are setting themselves up for success in future scenarios. While they will likely never be a bear in a cave with a storm outside–they will absolutely be in a situation where they need to wait to get something they want. Or in a situation where they are disappointed when something does not go their way or when someone disagrees with them. Being bears in a cave at age 3 is practice for moments like those when they are 8, 12, or 30 years old. Their play is creating neural pathways in their young brains that will help these children better handle moments of dysregulation in the future. Toddlers and young children bite and hit because they are still figuring out how to communicate their wants and needs. Showing them how to play and modeling what play looks like can help them move past these impulses to begin to develop the higher cognitive functions that are necessary for healthy growth and development. Psychologists conducted a study in which groups of 3, 5, and 7-year-olds were asked to stand still for as long as they could. They asked half of the children to stand still with no other instructions. The other half of the children were told to pretend they were guards while they were standing. Interestingly, there was little difference in how long the two groups of 3-year-olds were able to stand (not very long), and the two groups of 7-year-olds (who lasted a little longer) also stood for a similar amount of time regardless of who they imagined themselves to be. But the 5-year-olds had a larger disparity. Those who were pretending to be guards were able to stand for longer periods than the others–about as long as the groups of 7-year-olds. Furthermore, when imaginary rules were added like pretending an enemy army was coming, children were able to stand in place even longer than the 7-year-olds. The ones without an imaginative prompt stood for about as long as the groups of 3-year-olds. So the question was posed, why were the 5-year-olds more affected by the imaginative prompt than the 3 or 7-year-olds? The conclusion was that the imaginative play of preschoolers gives children the ability to overcome the impulsiveness of toddlerhood to develop the intentional behavior essential to higher mental functions. Skipping over this stage of development can have long-lasting effects on a student for years down the line. When deep play is frequently cut short or skipped entirely (often in favor of screen time, overly structured teacher-led activities, or set-outcome-focused activities), children miss out on the essential stage of childhood in which they learn impulse control and delayed gratification. As teachers and parents notice the long-term effects of children playing less, it’s important that we are intentional with our approach to our children’s playtime and that we allow our children as many chances to engage in play as we are able. -Morah Candace |
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