Recently, I started asking a standard question, exactly the same way, to children during their 3 to 10 year old check-ups. This wasn’t premeditated. Like all physicians, I go through phases of what I ask kids to elicit their experiences and beliefs, listen to their language and observe their development. I learn a lot about my patients from what they choose to answer. Both in their receptive language skills (how they understand me) and their expressive skills (how they speak–fluidly, articulately, with sentences) to their cognition (how they understand concepts and theories). No one talks as much when in the exam room as they do at home. Pediatricians know this (of course!), but these questions are a great way to learn a lot about a child’s wellness and get to know my patients. It’s also the part of the day I enjoy the most.
But when I started asking a recent question something became utterly clear. I’d say,
“What do you like to do at home?”
I expected the usual suspects. Things like, “Watch TV,” “Play the DS,”, or “Play with princesses or doll houses.” Not that I expected stereotypes, I just expected specifics. But instead, there has been a uniform, single-word response. Breath-taking. These children are all saying the exact same thing.
“Play.”
One word.
It’s not “play with______.” It’s just,”play.” It has started to feel like they’re defining their liberty, their freedom, or the whims of childhood. Like so many of us, they delight in the space to create, invent, imagine, and associate with others. Time to simply play.
Of course it shouldn’t be an entire surprise. The founder of Montessori herself felt that children’s work was their play and that children develop through their experiences with their environment.
Delicious isn’t it?
Play-based curriculum may be something entirely different than the play these children distill down as their uniformly favorite thing to do at home. But I believe they may compliment each other. The importance of play-based learning was driven home recently in a nice opinion piece by Erika and Nicholas Christakis that circulated online. Erika Christakis, an early learning teacher, and Nicholas Christaki, a professor of medicine and sociology, tackle the essence of how to prepare kids to thrive in college. They should know, they serve as house masters to one of the residential house at Harvard. They state, “The real “readiness” skills that make for an academically successful kindergartener or college student have as much to do with emotional intelligence as they do with academic preparation.” Take a peek at what they say about letting your children play.
Children are on to something. We gotta find more time, at all points in our life, to play.
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Katie says
Interesting. I am eager to hear how Will answers you in a few months. I feel as if we play a lot, but am curious to see his interpretation. And also fascinating to hear how you are analyzing me at the same time! LOL! Only thing is, I DO talk as much in the exam room as at home. You poor thing.
Wendy Sloneker says
I saw a tutorial this morning ….hoping it offers inspiration, or serves as an example: How to make a balance board.
https://www.elsiemarley.com/tag/balance-board
A simple toy – that is fun to make together, and fun to play with together…for more than just the youngsters, I suspect.
I’m not the author of the tutorial, am just connecting some dots.
Playfully and respectfully,
Wendy Sloneker
Viki says
Yay for your patients and your parents who let them have unstructured time to play! Sadly, since kindergarten is now what first grade used to be and preschools are expected to be what kindergarten used to be. We toured preschools and saw phonics lessons, math manipulatives, and homework! Eeek. Parents and preschools feel the pressure of getting their kids “school ready.” My kid attends a small co-op preschool that is play-based and lots of fun. When I give tours, parents often say that they want to find a school that will provide structure, teach their kids how to follow instruction from a teacher, sit quietly and attentively at circle, learn their letter sounds so they can be ready to read in kindergarten. When they see the kids playing, they think that it’s not school because they can do play doh at home. I always say: yes, it’s a lot like home with the addition of 15 other kids that they can talk, explore, and get along with. 😉
Here’s another article from Slate on two recent studies: https://www.slate.com/id/2288402/
For parents who want a detailed, research-backed bibliography on how play supports learning, read Einstein Never Used Flashcards (https://www.amazon.com/Einstein-Never-Used-Flashcards-Learn–/dp/B00196UBTO/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300832893&sr=1-1)
Vera says
I just read Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (and then wrote a blog post about it where I said….) it made me even more sure of my feelings about young children and play. We get so very few years of freely being ourselves, being playful and creative and imaginative. Then years and years of school (I was in school for 24 years, that is mind-boggling!) that just slowly quashes all that, and those school years are starting earlier and earlier. And so, I see it as my mission right now to fiercely protect my childrens’ right to PLAY. I made the decision this year that my kindergartner would do NO extra-curricular activities, and it was so clearly the right decision, looking back. She comes home from school, grabs a blanket, some baby dolls and a tea set, and heads out to the fort their dad built in the backyard with her little sister, and they play all afternoon until I call them in for dinner. There isn’t ANY piano drills, math flash cards, organized sports (if you can call a sport with 5 year olds that), etc. that I would trade for that!! It’s also why we don’t have the TV on during the week and don’t own a video game system.
Wendy Sue Swanson, MD says
@Vera,
Did you like Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother? Did you finish it? Will you send us a link to your blog post about it?
Wendy Sue Swanson, MD says
Vera, I found your post (https://verassong.blogspot.com/2011/03/i-have-opinion-too-battle-hymn-of-tiger.html) …and the take away is here in one of your paragraphs:
” Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is a great book, when read as a memoir of one mother’s experience parenting her two daughters. There are good parenting lessons to be learned – the virtue of truly investing time in our children (REAL time, not just shuttling them around), and the importance of learning to be flexible and learning who our children are. Reading about (or seeing) what other parents are doing is okay if it forces you to think about what you believe and want for your own children, as long as the conclusions you draw are your own.”
I like what you said about truly investing, not just shuttling. It’s a luxury, really, to have and to carve out that kind of time…