tvSmarter » Play

Parenting used to be a much easier endeavor. Before the era of endless TV, parents just let their kids go outside and play. There was safety in numbers, and almost always plenty of kids outside to play with.

Not anymore. Now, if you send you child outside to play, chances are he/she won’t find anyone to play with. The neighborhood kids are mostly hidden away, on the couch, watching the tube (with a bit of video gaming thrown in).

Mike Lanza is doing his best to change all that (one neighborhood at a time).

Excerpts from a San Francisco Chronicle article, From landscape to playscape:

Lanza, the father of three boys, built the outdoor wonderland with a mission in mind. He wants children to rediscover the joys of playing freely outside, so he’s given all the kids in his neighborhood an open invitation to play in what he calls his “front yard family room.” And the play equipment in his backyard, which would make the White House’s youngest residents envious, also is accessible to all.

Old-Fashioned Childhood:

Like many parents, Lanza, 46, looks back fondly on his own childhood spent playing with friends in the neighborhood – tag, pick-up football, hide-and-seek – knocking on doors to swell the numbers, and all the while untethered from parents. The key difference between then and now, he says, was the freedom children enjoyed.

“Kids sought out things to do that were fun,” he says. “They didn’t always ask their parents’ permission, and they didn’t have the indoor distractions like video games or computers, nor all the organized activities parents orchestrate now. So they went outside and came up with things to do.”

Neighborhood Culture

Along with creating the physical elements of a communal play environment, Lanza has been working to solidify a kid culture in the neighborhood – spending time with parents and kids, hanging out on evenings in the front yard, and throwing spontaneous potlucks for people to get to know one another.

“Weather permitting, our two boys are practically always outside in the front or backyard if they’re home and if they’re not eating or sleeping,” he says. “And pretty much every evening our kids are playing with other kids, usually at our place, and sometimes at a neighbor’s house. It can be very free-flowing and spontaneous.”

And not surprising:

It probably goes without saying that the Lanza family doesn’t own a TV or any electronic games.

I hope the parents in Mr. Lanza’s neighborhood appreciate what he has done (I’m sure the kids do!).

In addition Mr. Lanza write a blog called Playborhood.com, in which he describes his efforts and provides tips, and info for anyone hoping to make their own neighborhood a more fun and inviting place.

Way to go Mr. Lanza!

And here are a couple of blogs inspired by Playborhood:

http://oakvillenorth.playbourhood.com/

http://berkeley.playborhood.com/

Floor Games and Sand Play

terry33 — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 05:22:12 +0000

Hero’s Home

Originally uploaded by Eric K.

Neil Postman, argues in his book “The Disappearance of Childhood” that the idea of childhood as a separate, innocent time for play and learning is very much a recent invention.

In hunter gatherer societies children have plenty of time to play and also to learn naturally from older children and adults going about their business.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/200808/children-educate-themselves-iii-the-wisdom-hunter-gatherers

But, as Postman convincingly argues, the Middles Ages (or the Dark Ages) was a very harsh time for children. Children were expected to work from a very early age, and work hard, and parents were free to do with them as they like. At age 7, they were considered to have reached the age of reason and were given the same sentence for any crime as adults (including hanging for theft).

It wasn’t until the 1600s that the modern conception of childhood started to come about. Parents and community groups and churches opened schools and eventually playgrounds. During the Victorian Era especially, Children’s Literature thrived along with the concept of childhood as an innocent time for play and learning, to be protected from adult concerns. School nevertheless was often harsh, but was a huge step up from factory work and mining and the many other forms of child labor.

H.G. Wells, very much in the spirit of the times, published, in 1911, “Floor Games“, a book extolling the delights of play. Wells describes in loving detail the creative play of his two sons as they used their imaginations to create towns, and towers, railways and islands, etc. This was exactly the sort of play he had enjoyed immensely growing up, and that he wanted to share with his two boys.

Later on, his book became the inspiration of Sandplay Therapy. The idea being that children, allowed to play, in a creative, non-structured fashion are able to work out their emotional traumas. Sandplay is a form of Play Therapy which has been extensively studied and found to be effective at improving the emotional life of children.

According to the Scientific American article on Play, “Research suggests that play is also critical for emotional health, possibly because it helps kids work through anxiety and stress.” …

“Afterward, the kids’ levels of distress were assessed again. The anxiety levels of the anxious kids who had played had dropped by more than twice as much as compared with the anxious kids who had listened to the story. (The kids who were not anxious to begin with stayed about the same.) Interestingly, those who played alone calmed down more than the ones who played with peers. The researchers speculate that through imaginative play, which is most easily initiated alone, children build fantasies that help them cope with difficult situations.”

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-serious-need-for-play&page=3

For most of human history and prehistory, children spent most of their time playing. Then the Dark Ages arrived which was a grim time for children, who were forced to work long hours just to survive. From the time of the Enlightenment, child labor was gradually outlawed, allowing more time for playing and learning. Now, that TV (and other electronica) has replaced play, too many children are being treated as residents of a “Home for the Infirm”: little play, but lots of TV, lots of prescription drugs, and constant hovering supervision.

Excerps from “The Serious Need for Play”

terry33 — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 06:43:13 +0000

Last Day of School

Originally uploaded by K Chu

Excerpts from an article published in Scientific American Mind (February 2009) called “The Serious Need for Play“.

Note, these are just excerpts, please click on the link to read the full, very fascinating, article.

The Serious Need for Play

Free, imaginative play is crucial for normal social, emotional and cognitive development. It makes us better adjusted, smarter and less stressed.

By Melinda Wenner

Key Concepts

- Childhood play is crucial for social, emotional and cognitive development.

- Imaginative and rambunctious “free play,” as opposed to games or structured activities, is the most essential type.

- Kids and animals that do not play when they are young may grow into anxious, socially maladjusted adults.

Free Play

“Free play,” as scientists call it, is critical for becoming socially adept, coping with stress and building cognitive skills such as problem solving. Research into animal behavior confirms play’s benefits and establishes its evolutionary importance: ultimately, play may provide animals (including humans) with skills that will help them survive and reproduce.

Most psychologists agree that play affords benefits that last through adulthood, but they do not always agree on the extent to which a lack of play harms kids—particularly because, in the past, few children grew up without ample frolicking time. But today free play may be losing its standing as a staple of youth. According to a paper published in 2005 in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, children’s free-play time dropped by a quarter between 1981 and 1997. Concerned about getting their kids into the right colleges, parents are sacrificing playtime for more structured activities. As early as preschool, youngsters’ after-school hours are now being filled with music lessons and sports—reducing time for the type of imaginative and rambunctious cavorting that fosters creativity and cooperation.

This creative aspect is key because it challenges the developing brain more than following predetermined rules does. In free play, kids use their imagination and try out new activities and roles.

Social Skills

How do these seemingly pointless activities benefit kids? Perhaps most crucially, play appears to help us develop strong social skills. “You don’t become socially competent via teachers telling you how to behave,” Pellegrini says. “You learn those skills by interacting with your peers, learning what’s acceptable, what’s not acceptable.” Children learn to be fair and take turns—they cannot always demand to be the fairy queen, or soon they have no playmates. “They want this thing to keep going, so they’re willing to go the extra mile” to accommodate others’ desires, he explains. Because kids enjoy the activity, they do not give up as easily in the face of frustration as they might on, say, a math problem—which helps them develop persistence and negotiating abilities.

Keeping things friendly requires a fair bit of communication—arguably the most valuable social skill of all. Play that transpires with peers is the most important in this regard. Studies show that children use more sophisticated language when playing with other children than when playing with adults. In pretend play, for instance, “they have to communicate about something that’s not physically present, so they have to use complicated language in such a way that they can communicate to their peer what it is that they’re trying to say,” Pellegrini explains. For example, kids can’t get away with just asking, “Vanilla or chocolate?” as they hand a friend an imaginary cone. They have to provide contextual clues: “Vanilla or chocolate ice cream: Which one would you like?” Adults, on the other hand, fill in the blanks themselves, making things easier for kids.

If play helps children become socialized, then lack of play should impede social development—and studies suggest that it does. According to a 1997 study of children living in poverty and at high risk of school failure, published by the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation in Ypsilanti, Mich., kids who enrolled in play-oriented preschools are more socially adjusted later in life than are kids who attended play-free preschools where they were constantly instructed by teachers. By age 23, more than one third of kids who had attended instruction-oriented preschools had been arrested for a felony as compared with fewer than one tenth of the kids who had been in play-oriented preschools. And as adults, fewer than 7 percent of the play-oriented preschool attendees had ever been suspended from work, but more than a quarter of the directly instructed kids had.

Animal studies lend support to the idea that play deprivation leads to poor social skills. According to a study published in 1999 in Behavioural Brain Research, rats that are kept isolated during the two weeks of development when they most frequently play—the fourth and fifth weeks after birth—are much less socially active when they later encounter other rats as compared with rats that are not isolated during the same two-week period. And a study published in Developmental Psychobiology in 2002 revealed that male rats reared in isolation during their youth fail to display normal avoidance behaviors when introduced to dominant male rats that repeatedly attack them. Could play deprivation specifically cause these behavioral problems—or could social isolation in general have been the culprit?

Another study suggests that play promotes neural development in “higher” brain areas involved in emotional reactions and social learning. Scientists reported in 2003 that play fighting releases brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)—a protein that stimulates the growth of new neurons—in these regions. The researchers allowed 13 control rats to play freely with companions for three and a half days and kept 14 other rats isolated for the same period. On examining the rats’ brains, the researchers found that the cortex, hippocampus, amygdala and pons of the rats that had played contained much higher levels of BDNF than those of the rats that had not. “I think play is the major mechanism whereby higher regions of the brain get socialized,” says Washington State University neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp, who co-authored the study.

Stress Relief

Animal studies also support the idea that play helps to alleviate stress—a concept known in neuroscience as social buffering. In a study published in 2008, Gettysburg College neuroscientist Stephen Siviy put rats into a chamber by themselves and exposed them to a collar previously worn by a cat, which made them visibly anxious. Later, the chamber was cleaned so it no longer smelled of the cat, the rats were put back in without the cat collar, and the rats immediately became anxious again, probably because they associated the space with the cat. But if Siviy and his colleagues then introduced another rat into the chamber—one that had never been exposed to the cat collar and was not afraid—the two would begin playing by chasing each other, tumbling and pretend fighting. And shortly thereafter, the first rat would relax and become calm, suggesting that play helped the rat to lessen its anxiety.

Intellectual & Creative Skills

Relieving stress and building social skills may seem to be obvious benefits of play. But research hints at a third, more counterintuitive area of influence: play actually appears to make kids smarter. In a classic study published in Developmental Psychology in 1973, researchers divided 90 preschool children into three groups. One group was told to play freely with four common objects—among the choices were a pile of paper towels, a screwdriver, a wooden board and a pile of paper clips. A second set was asked to imitate an experimenter using the four objects in common ways. The last group was told to sit at a table and draw whatever they wanted, without ever seeing the objects. Each scenario lasted 10 minutes. Immediately afterward, the researchers asked the children to come up with ideas for how one of the objects could be used. The kids who had played with the objects named, on average, three times as many nonstandard, creative uses for the objects than the youths in either of the other two groups did, suggesting that play fosters creative thinking.

Play fighting also improves problem solving. According to a paper published by Pellegrini in 1989, the more elementary school boys engaged in rough-housing, the better they scored on a test of social problem solving. During the test, researchers presented kids with five pictures of a child trying to get a toy from a peer and five pictures of a child trying to avoid being reprimanded by his mother. The subjects were then asked to come up with as many possible solutions to each social problem; their score was based on the variety of strategies they mentioned, and children who play-fought regularly tended to score much better.

Does lack of play, then, impede the development of problem-solving skills? Perhaps, according to animal studies. In a paper published in Developmental Psychobiology in 1978, experimenters separated young rats by mesh partitions—they could see, smell and hear other rats but could not play with them—for the 20 days during development when they would have most frequently played. The researchers taught these rats, and a group that had been allowed to play without constraints, to pull a rubber ball out of the way to get a food treat. A few days later they switched the setup so the rats would have to push the same ball to get the treat. The isolated rats took much longer to try new approaches, and thus solve the problem, than did the rats that had played. The authors speculate that through play, animals learn to try new things, and animals that do not play simply do not acquire this same behavioral flexibility.

Playing also appears to help with language development, according to a 2007 study in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. Researchers at the University of Washington gave a box of toy blocks to children from middle- and low-income families aged 18 months to two and a half years. Parents of these kids, as well as parents of a similar group of kids who had no blocks, kept track of how often the children played. After six months, the kids who had played with blocks scored significantly higher on language tests than the others did. The researchers are not sure, however, whether these improvements resulted from playing with blocks per se—because by playing with blocks, the youngsters were spending less time in unproductive activities such as watching television.

But why might play help kids excel? Animal researchers believe that play serves as a kind of training for the unexpected. “Play is like a kaleidoscope,” says evolutionary biologist Marc Bekoff of the University of Colorado at Boulder, in that it is random and creative. The bottom line, he posits, is that play encourages flexibility and creativity that may, in the future, be advantageous in unexpected situations or new environments. Some child psychologists, such as Tufts University child development expert David Elkind, agree. Play is “a way in which children learn,” Elkind says, “and in the absence of play, children miss learning experiences.”

Need for Play

If play is so crucial, what happens to children who are not playing enough? Ultimately, no one knows—but many psychologists are worried. Because play is somewhat risky—animals that are not alert and watchful are at risk of being attacked by predators—it probably evolved and persists because it confers survival advantages. “If it wasn’t important, it wouldn’t have evolved in its elaborate form,” Bekoff says.

Indeed, evidence indicates that play is evolutionarily quite ancient. Rats that have had their neocortex removed—a large brain region that is involved in higher-order thinking such as conscious thought and decision making—still engage in normal play, which suggests that play motivation comes from the brain stem, a structure that precedes the evolution of mammals. “This means that the core, genetically-provided circuitry for play is situated in very ancient regions of the brain,” explains Panksepp, who led the experiment in 1994.

Of course, many parents today believe they are acting in their kids’ best interests when they swap free play for what they see as valuable learning activities. Some mothers and fathers may also hesitate to let their kids play outside unattended, and they may fret about the possibility of the scrapes and broken bones that sometimes arise during play fighting or rambunctious fantasy play, says Sergio M. Pellis, a behavioral neuroscientist at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta. Although those instincts are natural, protecting kids “simply defrays those costs to later, when those same children will have difficulty in dealing with an unpredictable, complex world,” Pellis says. “A child who has had a rich exposure to social play experiences is more likely to become an adult who can manage unpredictable social situations.”

Parents should let children be children—not just because it should be fun to be a child but because denying youth’s unfettered joys keeps kids from developing into inquisitive, creative creatures, Elkind warns. “Play has to be reframed and seen not as an opposite to work but rather as a complement,” he says. “Curiosity, imagination and creativity are like muscles: if you don’t use them, you lose them.”

The Importance of Play

terry33 — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 14:32:53 +0000

Why do parents allow their kids to watch so much TV?

Obviously part of the problem is that the TV/movie industry has been so incredibly effective at convincing most people (including parents) that TV is beneficial, educational, and at the worst harmless.

But, I do think there is a deeper reason. And that is that throughout human history parents have, to a great extent, had a quite laissez-faire attitude towards their kids. After looking after their children’s physical needs, and making sure they do their chores, go to school, do their homework, children have been very much left to their own devices. And this has been a very good child-rearing strategy. Why? Because children know the secret of learning, which is to learn through play. Children have a powerful instinct for playing. So all those hours that parents allow them their freedom are not wasted, they are put to good use.

The child benefits from all the benefits of play, and the parents also benefit from getting a break from their kids. It’s important for parents to play with their kids, but adults don’t have the energy, stamina and enthusiasm for play that kids have. The parents are going to get tired of playing long before their child has had enough.

Up until the TV became pervasive, this laissez-faire attitude among parents has been a good thing. Now, unfortunately this attitude of allowing kids to do as they please, has lead to huge amounts of television watching. TV is naturally addictive, but even more important, it is parents that are encouraging their kids to become hooked on TV:

But in Wednesday’s follow-up, Kaiser asked parents — in a survey and in focus-group sessions — why they and their children use TV and other electronic media the way they do.

“I had this sense of kids clamoring to use media and parents trying to keep their finger in the dam,” lead researcher Victoria Rideout said. “I found that not to be a very accurate picture in most cases.”

Instead, a generation of parents raised on TV is largely encouraging the early use of television, video games and computers by their own children.

These parents say TV and computer games teach the ABCs and how to share when they don’t have the time. Television provides time for parents to cook or take a shower. They use screen time as a reward or, paradoxically, to help kids wind down at bedtime.

“There’s this enthusiasm and tremendous lack of concern” about media use, Rideout said.

Parents enjoy watching TV, and enjoy watching TV with their kids (quality time together). It is much less stressful for the parents if the kids are quietly watching TV instead of running around making noise and making messes. Plus, a child quietly watching TV inside is usually safer than a child playing outside, and must less worry-producing for the parent.

The Importance of Play

Peter Gray (a research professor of psychology) has an excellent blog, called Freedom to Learn, on why play is so important:

For example:

Play is Nature’s Way of Teaching Us New Skills

Children Educate Themselves III: The Wisdom of Hunter-Gatherers

The Lack of Play has Experts Worried

Development experts say children suffer due to lack of unstructured fun

Experts: Lack of playtime is hurting children. Kids need play to be healthy, learn creativity and social skills, some argue.

NEW AAP REPORT STRESSES PLAY FOR HEALTHY DEVELOPMENT

In Richmond, kids getting lesson in play

The Recess Regimen

Forget Homework

The Art and Science of Play

Amazon Listmania: The Power of Play

Google Search: Importance of Play

Self-Regulation, Creative Play, and Television

terry33 — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 08:14:02 +0000

“Self-regulation is a critical skill for kids. Unfortunately, most kids today spend a lot of time doing three things: watching television, playing video games and taking lessons. None of these activities promote self-regulation.”

- Alix Spiegel

Unplug Your Kids has a very interesting post about an NPR article and interview. In this NPR article, Alix Spiegel describes how creative play is essential for the development of self-regulation and “executive function”.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19212514&sourceCode=RSS

Here’s a quote from this article:

It turns out that all that time spent playing make-believe actually helped children develop a critical cognitive skill called executive function. Executive function has a number of different elements, but a central one is the ability to self-regulate. Kids with good self-regulation are able to control their emotions and behavior, resist impulses, and exert self-control and discipline.

We know that children’s capacity for self-regulation has diminished. A recent study replicated a study of self-regulation first done in the late 1940s, in which psychological researchers asked kids ages 3, 5 and 7 to do a number of exercises. One of those exercises included standing perfectly still without moving. The 3-year-olds couldn’t stand still at all, the 5-year-olds could do it for about three minutes, and the 7-year-olds could stand pretty much as long as the researchers asked. In 2001, researchers repeated this experiment. But, psychologist Elena Bodrova at the National Institute for Early Education Research says, the results were very different.

Today’s 5-year-olds were acting at the level of 3-year-olds 60 years ago, and today’s 7-year-olds were barely approaching the level of a 5-year-old 60 years ago,” Bodrova explains. “So the results were very sad.”

“Sad because self-regulation is incredibly important. Poor executive function is associated with high dropout rates, drug use and crime. In fact, good executive function is a better predictor of success in school than a child’s IQ. Children who are able to manage their feelings and pay attention are better able to learn. As executive function researcher Laura Berk explains, “Self-regulation predicts effective development in virtually every domain.”

Alix Spiegel then goes on to explain why it is that researchers believe that it is creative play that is crucial to the development of self-regulation and “executive function”.

For more on the importance of self-regulation see:

Self-Discipline May Beat Smarts as Key to Success – Washington Post

High IQ: Not as good for you as you thought – Cognitive Daily

Does TV displace Creative Play?

Well as a matter of fact is does:

“The results also showed that for seven- to 12-year-olds, the more TV they watched, the less time they spent doing homework, and among kids of all ages — especially among those younger than five — more TV meant significantly less creative play.”

http://www.medpagetoday.com/tbprint.cfm?tbid=2621

Update I: Fairies and Philosophy about CSS Parenting

Update II: Creative Play Makes for Kids in Control about Tools of the Mind

Update III: The Serious Need for Play from Scientific American