Play Time Is Serious Business!

I often pick a column topic based on what I am seeing a lot at the Pediatric Emergency Department here at Lafayette General.  Lately we have been seeing lots of unhappy kids- suicidal teenagers, violent grade schoolers, children with anxiety and panic attacks.  Even minor things like cars backing into each other in parking lots become blown up: parents and their kids feeling victimized in these accidents and exaggerating their neck and back pain. Pick up any newspaper or listen to a news report and you will hear the same.  It is a national trend that people are unhappier, using more antidepressant medication, attempting suicide more, and of course there are more and more mass shootings.  What happened to easy-going kids and adults?  It seems that kids once handled adversity better, took losses with good grace, negotiated well with others, and generally were happier with their lot in life.  Many researchers are beginning to believe that a lot of these problems in kid and adult functioning are partly because of an erosion in the amount of time kids are allowed to play. Really?  Loss of play time leads to unhappy kids and adults? Play has been called "the work of childhood."  Play is more important to a child's development than homework.  Lion cubs play at hunting so they can learn to hunt and eat and survive as adult lions.  Kids need play to practice what humans do as adults- interact well and handle life in complex society.  For lion cubs and kids to play, of course, it has to be fun.  No kid wants to "play" corporate board meeting or how to settle a lawn mowing dispute with their neighbor.  But if you think about it, isn't this what they are learning when they play Monopoly? What is the best kind of play?  Researchers are finding that the best play is kid-driven, kid directed: simple games that are fun, with the rules regulated by the kids themselves: games like tag and pick-up baseball, doll houses and board games, imaginary play as explorers and heroes.  These are games where kids play face to face and talk through the rules and parameters themselves.  When kids run the game and make it fun, they end up practicing adult life skills. Organized sports and computer games do not fit the bill when it comes to making mature, capable kids.  The problem with organized sports is that they are adult-regulated, which automatically takes a lot of the fun out.  Adults make the rules and settle the disputes while the kids mope around the dugout waiting for a brief turn at bat.  Adults tell the kids how they should act or behave instead of the kids trying out how to act and behave between themselves. In computer and video games, the game program sets the rules and runs the play.  Sure they are fun, but the fun is transient and superficial, continual brief episodes of a "fun high."  Playing video games is the psychological equal of eating candy- something that is nice once in awhile, but not something kids should do all day.  No lessons are learned in video games except how to run the controller better and better. The life lessons learned in real play time are life-long.  How to take a skinned knee without being a victim.  How to lose gracefully.  How to live with disappointment and carry on with a smile. Of course, kids don't learn this right away.  There are tantrums and kicking over the checker board and storming away.  But if kids want to continue to have fun and play with others, they have to control those childish actions.  And when they practice controlling their childish urges as kids, that control is "hard-wired" in them by the time they are adults. So adults, let's protect our kids' play.  Limit the computer games.  Allow every opportunity for your kids to play with others.  Encourage your schools to keep recess.  Cut back on organized sports- your kid is not going to end up playing for the Yankees or the Saints anyway.  But she will probably have to negotiate a bank loan, and how can she do that if she hasn't played Monopoly? Special thanks to Daniel Yeager, a child therapist here in Lafayette, for ideas and input.