Looking at Play the Healthy Way

Imaginative Play Helps Teach Self-Regulation Skills

Child's play--particularly the kind kids do when they pretend, play roles and negotiate among each other--is something experts say is vital to healthy development. It's also increasingly threatened in a world dominated by media, electronic toys, a push for academic learning at younger ages, and lifestyles where children have less freedom or inclination to play with the neighborhood kids.

In his book The Power of Play, David Elkind, professor of child development at Tufts University, writes that over the past two decades, children have lost 12 hours of free time a week and that eight hours of that is unstructured play and outdoor activities. While those figures don't necessarily apply to preschool children, they illustrate a trend that does. In a report on the importance of play in child development, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, Kenneth Ginsburg concludes children who live in poverty as well as children with abundant resources may not be receiving the full benefits of play.

Ginsburg documents several trends that have resulted in less time for free play, including a decline in kindergarten classroom recess periods over the past two decades, passive entertainment such as television and computers that keep kids from engaging in free play, and a tendency for some parents to over-schedule structured activities.

He points out that when play is allowed to be child driven, children practice decision-making skills, move at their own pace and discover their own areas of interest. Such free play enables them to, in Ginsburg's words, "create a world they can master, conquering their fears while practicing adult roles." In the process, they develop new competencies that help them do such things as work in groups, share, negotiate, and resolve conflicts.

Imaginative Play
A closely related type of play, involving some adult participation is imaginative play. Research shows that when imaginative play is facilitated by a skilled teacher, it helps build executive function (EF), a critical cognitive skill that helps children learn to self-regulate. In turn, self-regulation helps children learn how to self-discipline and control impulses.

This skill is as important a predictor of a young child's future success as academic learning. Imaginative play is more effective at teaching a child self-regulation skills than video games or even education-based toys.

Props used in imaginative play are generally not targeted for a specific scenario, such as role-playing as a nurse or teacher. Rather, children play with symbolic props that could fit into many different scenarios, depending on what the kids choose to imagine it could be. For instance, a stick could be sword for a swashbuckling pirate, or it could also be a walking cane for an elderly grandmother.

This sort of play was the norm until the second half of the 20th century, says Howard Chudacoff, a Brown University professor specializing in the history of childhood play. He says play radically changed with the increase of toys designed for specific types of play with predetermined scripts, particularly toys based on movies or television shows. Many required less effort and imagination on the part of children.

The importance of play and research on its role in child development is getting a boost from the New York-based Strong National Museum of Play. The museum plans to launch the first interdisciplinary journal on the subject, the American Journal of Play, this year.

Meanwhile, free play continues to encounter obstacles on its journey back to its roots. Parental concerns about the safety of their children drive kids inside where passive activities often await them, or to sporting teams or other organized play.

Chudacoff notes that in the second half of the 20th century, parents have come to view structured environments as better for their children--something that's bound to limit free play. And in school settings, including some preschools, young children continue to lose free play as teachers prepare them for the tests they will inevitably face. Chudacoff and others hope the new awareness of the developmental importance of free play will help restore it to its proper place in children's lives.

Sidebar
Success with a Play-Based Curriculum
The Tools of the Mind curriculum, developed by educational psychologists Elena Bodrova and Deborah Leong, is based on the idea that children learn best through play. Preschool classrooms using Tools of the Mind curriculum are filled with activities designed to build executive function skills. Key elements include games and other child-directed play activities that promote self-regulation and require children to plan ahead and control impulses. These critical skills help children follow the directions of others, as well as self-direct, as they grow older and thereby increase their ability to learn in a traditional classroom setting as they move into elementary school and beyond.

A 2007 study led by University of British Columbia researcher Adele Diamond found that the children in the Tools of the Mind program performed significantly better on executive function skills. Diamond concludes, "Though preschool teachers are under pressure to limit play and spend more time on instruction, mature social pretend play in preschool may be more critical for academic success than preschool academic instruction."