Playful Problems: Part 1
Ways to Support Play for Your Unique Family
This is a two-part series on how modern advice can make play into a perfectionism trap for families. Ideas on how to navigate some of the challenges of play in the context of unique families.
What do you remember about play? I remember being barefoot outside, losing track of time deeply engrossed in games of “farm”. “Farm” involved doing imaginary farm chores in our suburban yard with intermittent horseback riding (bike rides). I remember elaborate soap opera dramas with my barbies. I remember recording “The Kathryn Show” on a hot pink cassette player. Out in the world while shopping at Marshalls with my mother, which I found to be profoundly boring, I would create stories between the mannequins. More than once I disappeared under a clothing rack or two only to emerge in a panic because my mother had made her way down the aisle. We were always quickly reunited. I could go on, but you get the idea. These are fond memories, and the research would say that these were also important for my development, although I don’t think that was what I or my parents were most concerned with at the time.
To say that play is important to child development doesn’t really do it justice. Play is important to overall development. It is connected to creativity, imagination, fine and gross motor development. Play supports children in developing social, decision-making skills and can support connection with both peers and the adults in their lives. So, what is play? According Dr. Peter Gray, PhD, author of Free to Learn, there are some key characteristics of play:
1. Play is self-chosen and self-directed.
2. Play is activity in which means are more valued than ends.
3. Play has structure, or rules, which are not dictated by physical necessity but emanate from the minds of the players.
4. Play is imaginative, non-literal, mentally removed in some way from “real” or “serious” life.
5. Play involves an active, alert, but non-stressed frame of mind.
I am not going to dive into these characteristics here but for a more detailed exploration of play characteristics, you can find an article from Dr. Gray here on Psychology Today. The research on play gives us understanding and support to what we as humans have known for centuries. Play is a good thing. Unfortunately, what is not as good is some of the framing of advice about play. I feel itchy about the delivery of the advice I see out there. We have taken an important part of the human experience and created expectations and goals. And all too often these well-intended pieces of guidance mutate into ways to guilt and shame parents about something they are not doing the “right way”. So here begins a two-parter because there is a lot be said about play. I am going to focus on some of the playful problems modern families may encounter, with some ideas about ways you can support your unique child and their play.
Playful Problem #1: Time
Modern Family Schedules
Play takes time. And it actually takes more time than we expect. When my oldest was a young toddler, I was working full-time, commuting, and dealing with childcare alongside the all-important young child routines. Don’t mess with the routines. I remember talking with another working mom who jokingly but also slightly anxiously asked “when do have time to let them play?” We were already seeing that the “free” time was limited. There has been a lot discussed in recent years about how many growing kids (and their parents by default) are over-scheduled. Sports, clubs, and academic enrichment cut into the after-school hours and well into the evenings for many families. It is reasonable that families be cautious of this over-scheduled reality and ensure they make time for play and downtime. It can be helpful to weigh just how helpful some of these enrichment activities are by using your values and the needs of your unique children as guides. However, for some families, it doesn’t feel like they have much choice in their limited schedule. Families who are dealing with complex medical needs or who have higher support needs will have medical or therapy appointments that don’t feel optional. Factor in the time costs of transportation to appointments and once again the downtime feels pretty thin. Time is certainly going to range depending on the family’s differing constraints. Some families may have a stay-at-home parent or caregiver, some families will be engaged in home education and others may be working full-time. Constraints on free time and pain points may vary. However, even families who may have a caregiver primarily in the home still need to navigate having time for all of the parts of play.
The Before and After
There are other types of time to factor in with play. Dependent on the needs of the child(ren), there may be set up and clean up support. The level of play involvement and supervision required may vary dependent on the individual child. Although free, independent play is often the desired goal, this is not always the right fit for every child (more on that next week). So, depending on the needs of the child, where the play is occurring, the before/after tasks of the play, and the amount of adult attention/involvement required, there is more time to account for. Engagement in play also takes time. Free play takes kids some time to get into and fully engage with a play theme.
How Much Play?
There are many recommendations floating around about the amount of time a child “should” play. It may be useful to have a guiding goal to helps caregivers prioritize play, but prescriptive recommendations can also cause stress and perfectionism. I recall listening to a parenting audiobook a while back that had prescriptive time recommendations for all types of activities with your child, often intended to be one-on-one. I started to wonder if the author had totaled their time recommendations because there was no human who could meet all these goals and still attend to school, work, eat and sleep (and there were goals around sleep and eating too). Alas, I did not add them myself…because I did not have the time. We must be wary of prescriptive recommendations. Some are tied to research and some are not. Even ones tied to research often stem from correlational data and cannot account for all the individual complexities of a family. I have heard recommendations like 4-6 hours a day of unstructured play outside. It takes some serious life engineering to meet goals like this. If that aligns with a family’s values and abilities, that is great, go for it. For others, this feels so out of reach that it feels not worth even trying.
What About How the Kid Feels?
There are also going to be individual variations on the amount and type of play your kid wants to do. Be wary of moralizing that a certain type of play for a certain amount of time is superior to another type (once again more on this topic next week). Not every kid is going to develop a love for extended time in nature play, and that is okay. What happens when you plan time for play and your kid is just not in a playing mood? Maybe they need some downtime and a snack instead? For one of my children when he comes home from school he needs to decompress. His preferred way to do this is playing Minecraft. His brother, however, is ready to drop the backpack and get into an art project or playing an imaginary game in the yard. Schedules and time prioritized for play may not match up with the kids’ internal needs, and we need to respect that.
A Very Important Note: Watch Out for Boogeyman Advice
So far I have alluded to different types of recommendations about play which can range on how useful they are to a family. I want to take a moment here to give a recommendation of my own: be mindful when consuming advice on child development and parenting. Is the advice you are consuming the fear- and panic-inducing kind? No matter how well intended the source may be, be wary of passionate voices that make you feel awful. I have heard a lot of scare tactics across the whole spectrum of child development advice. Advice that implies the lack of free play is the “cause” of difficulties and neuro-differences such as anxiety, depression, ADHD and other health concerns is incomplete and harmful. As a parent of a child who has ADHD, I know he does not have ADHD because he didn’t have enough free, self-directed play. Beware of people trying to persuade you to do something for your child by using this boogeyman approach. The boogeyman doesn’t exist. For the children who experience anxiety or depression, or who are neurodivergent, we owe it to them to stop dicing up the research and giving inaccurate and hurtful interpretations. We owe it to their caregivers as well as this approach perpetuates fear, self-blame and isolation. Let’s do better. We can believe something is important for children and want to support others without using these fear-mongering approaches. Okay, off the soapbox…how to find more time for play.
So, What to Do About Time?
Start Here
If only I had some great “hacks” to make it all work out, but I do not. Don’t worry the internet has a lot of them, but spending time looking up “hacks” can itself be such a time suck. The place I recommend starting is where I always go—self-compassion. When we know something is important it’s easy to get hard on ourselves about whether we are doing it “right”. It doesn’t take long to get in a place of worry and blame that somehow your child is having a horrible childhood because they don’t get to play enough. This is hard, and giving yourself some kindness instead of upping the stress level is a good place to start. Worrying and stressing about play will not support you in being playful or creative. Also keep in mind that with self-compassion, you don’t just do it once and move forward to never feel badly about your child’s play again. This is a rinse and repeat situation. Some days you may need it a lot and others not so much. You can get really good at it.
Start Small
Now that we have been self-compassionate, take that moment of clarity to get creative about your time. Remember that for children, play is their native language, and often much to our frustration they are doing it everywhere--like the grocery store, doctor’s office, and dinner table. We have often joked about how one of my children can play with air. When he was younger, he would make his leftover food into talking characters while he waited for us to clean up from dinner. Start to notice the times in your day where there is already playfulness. Don’t get stuck on having the right materials or a woodland landscape, start to expand from those little windows of time. Maybe it’s conversation with silly voices at the dinner table, a playful exchange in the bathtub or a couch fort at the end of the day. Small is a start and you have start somewhere.
Try a More Holistic View
There are seasons of life that are busier than others. During those times, instead of getting stuck in the idea of rigid daily recommendations, go for the amount of play time over a week. There may be sports seasons or health needs that dominate a certain period of time. It’s easy to get nervous about jam-packed days but if you know you are going to have some down time mixed in over a week’s time, it can relieve some of that pressure.
Tune Into Your Unique Kid
If you notice that kid is complaining about not having time to play or is having a hard time with a busy schedule, think about where can you find some time. Use your values as a family to assess if there is anything you can take a pause on, or other changes you can make at home to allow for more free time.
What About Help?
For some families, having another person present to help facilitate play can be a bonus and address some of the time problem. If you have friends or family that want to pitch in, that is great. Another common recommendation is to have a mother’s helper or a babysitter that comes to play with the kids while parents work or do other care tasks. That’s great if it works for you, especially if you have kids who need supervision when playing, but hiring someone is work in itself. You must find/hire, pay money and there may be an element of supervision of the helper dependent on their age and capabilities. This is not without its own type of costs. It may be worth it but it’s not always an option for families.
Speaking of the finances of play, let’s move on to playful problem number #2-the financial cost.
Playful Problem #2: Financial Cost
Is Free Play Really Free?
Not always. There can be immense pressure to buy the “right” things to support a child in play. There are the educational toys, the loud toys, the most beloved character toys, the all-wooden toys and so on. There is discussion about “fixed” or “close-ended” toys versus “open-ended” toys. Close-ended toys are more specific in their use—like a puzzle, board game, or toy sets with a specific purpose and possibly more limited in how they can be used. Open-ended toys can have multiple uses available to the player. Open-ended toys are often touted as “better” but can be just as expensive, if not more than close-ended toys. Both types of toys do have benefits to offer. There has been a trend of Montessori toys that has been big in recent years, and with trends comes more expensive versions of simple toys. Along with the range of toys one can acquire for their kids, there are also activities one can find on the internet to support play. “Boredom buster” activities or the “35 things to do with a toddler on a rainy day” lists often involve household items. I have tried many of these activities. Some have been great and some not so much. These activities still cost money (and time) even if not quite as expensive as a Disney character toy or a wooden stacking rainbow.
When it Comes to Toys…
Defer to the Experts
I am going to defer to the expert in your home on this—your kid. Your child will have preferences of their own, and you will know what they enjoy playing with. There is nothing wrong with experimenting with a mix of close-ended and open-ended toys and seeing what sparks interest. I have witnessed my kids playing flexibly and creatively with close-ended toys and open-ended toys alike. Pick toys that connect with your child’s interests, their developmental level, and what is appropriate for your family budget. There is something to be said about kids becoming overwhelmed with lots of choices (just like many adults). Having fewer toys in general or having fewer toys out where your kids play can be help them engage more deeply in their play (more on space next week).
The Cheap/Free Stuff
There are so many things for kids to play with that cost little to nothing. Some kids may need a jump start on how to re-purpose an item into their play. Some children do need more scaffolding in this department, and that’s okay. Nature offers a lot in terms of material for play. Be prepared for play with sticks, dirt, and rocks, but it can be part of the fun. When it comes to finding things already in your home, if you are getting rid of things in your home, assess whether they could be donated to play. We have donated some old pots to our backyard for mud soup. When I was a kid, my mother filled a costume box with some of her old clothing and inexpensive finds from thrift stores. For another low-budget activity, a babysitter from my childhood created a game called “vacation”. She would give me a construction paper envelope, magazine and scissors. I would cut out pictures of things to bring on my trip and then create stories about the items and the trip. I thought it was great, and it kept me occupied for an extended period of time.
You Have the Creativity You Need
When you have practiced some self-compassion about having the “right” play materials, then start to think about what they enjoy and how you can bring that into play. This is where you can flex some creative muscle. It’s not all about the stuff, it’s about the feeling of playfulness and joy. Follow the joy, and you might be surprised what you find.
Bonus Video: We all know the allure of the classic cardboard box and the playtime it invites. This week’s video below I share 5 non-toys my kids have enjoyed immensely over the years.
More on Playful Problems Next Week: Space and the Way We Play.
Don’t forget to leave a comment. Are there playful problems you have encountered in your family? I would love to hear about it.