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Parenting
with Gary & Anne Marie: Preschool
Preschoolers and the Benefits of Play
Play is your child's tutor.
It goes far beyond simply encouraging learning activities. Through attraction,
it becomes a means by which a child stretches himself beyond his present circumstances.
He takes chances. When you think about it, play often contains an element of
risk. Some risk is involved when a child ventures out on his first steps without
the aid of Mom or Dad. Risk is involved when a child shares a new toy with a
visiting friend or for the first time reaches out to pet the neighbor's puppy.
Risk is involved when standing on a stage reciting a single line in the Thanksgiving
play. He takes risks whenever the group's activities call for running, jumping,
and bumping. Risk is associated with being picked on a team or not picked at
all. In this sense, play motivates a child to step beyond the present to a new
level of experience.
Play also has significant educational value. During playtime a preschooler picks
up, manipulates, and studies toys of all types. He learns shapes, colors, sizes,
and textures and how parts of an object fit the whole of the object. His mobility
allows the development of life through the games he plays and the contact he
makes with others. In time, a preschooler learns to formulate plans, develop
strategies, and exercise his assessment skills in problem solving because of
play.
Developing socialization skills is one of the corollary affects of education.
Through play, children learn that their personal gratification is often dependent
on their cooperation with other children. Play teaches children about partnership,
teamwork, and fair play. It is through play that a child's primitive understanding
about "rules" is reinforced because most games have rules. Interestingly,
while the home environment may be more forgiving or patient with the bending
of game rules, it is quickly apparent to your child that his playmates are far
less tolerant of a rule being violated. He quickly learns that he must "follow
the rules"-or be at the mercy of his peer group.
Play is also therapeutic both physically and emotionally. Physical play releases
the pent-up energy stored during times of restriction. That is why recess time
at the school yard is so noisy and fun-filled. The child is released to play
with others. Physical play is a pressure valve allowing for the release of energy.
In the preschool years, play must have some outside activity that has a physical
dimension attached. Swinging, chasing after the dog, marching in Dumbo's imaginary
parade, hide-and-seek, or any activity that can get their little hearts pumping,
growing legs moving, and developing minds stimulated provide therapeutic benefits.
Imaginative, emotional play is freeing to the preschooler. Such play allows
a child to test his desires, fears, and hopes without the risk and hardship
of judgments and boundaries associated with reality. He is able to think outside
the boundaries of logic, reason, and reality. He is able to manage and direct
ideas that only he understands, and he does it in fragmented ways. He can take
a big box and a blanket, make it become Davy Crockett's fort, then a service
station for his trucks, followed by a broadcast booth like the one he saw yesterday
on television at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. In any event, the child
is in control of something he can and should control. Children need to be able
to control some things. (Parents too often err in allowing these "things"
to be Mom and Dad instead of the events of imaginative play.)
Another aspect of play is the element of repetition. Much more is taking place
in a preschooler's play than what appears on the surface. Repetition gives a
child the chance to consolidate skills needed to solve board games and puzzles,
to stack blocks, to or connect Hot Wheels tracks. Even though your child appears
to be doing the same thing over and over again, his activities are leading somewhere.
For example, a four-year-old may have mastered elementary motor skills necessary
for running and dodging a ball. Repetitious play advances him to the next level
of skills called anticipation, where movements are predicated not as a response
to the person throwing the ball, but to the anticipated throw itself. Here again,
strategy, thinking, and reasoning skills merge to bring the reward of success.
Success and accomplishment reinforce the cycles of learning.
Anticipation is not limited to the realm of physical movement, but extends also
to imaginative activity. To have expectations based on the belief of what will
happen tomorrow, a child must be able to imagine. Imagining what will happen
next, good or bad, is part of the thinking exercise of humanity. Parents give
little consideration to the fact that if a child is in any way deprived of imaginative
emotional play, either through discouragement or the lack of freedom at self-play,
he will equally be deprived of what it is to know hope. For hope itself is not
only a measure of the imagination transcending time and space, but of our very
humanity. It all comes back to the importance of play.
Play also contains the element of construction. Man by nature is a builder.
The Jewish Old Testament gives an account of a man named Nimrod called "the
builder of cities" (Genesis 10:6-12). In fact, he built eight mighty cities
by which he established his kingdom. One component of play common among children
worldwide is the construction component. Children are builders, and their efforts
reflect the knowledge of our day. With their amazing imaginations, they construct
buildings, boats, spaceships, mountains, overpasses, and tunnels. They use blocks,
sticks, paper, and grass. They erect tall buildings out of discarded oatmeal
boxes and bridges out of spare Lincoln Logs. Complete with sound effects, little
boys move massive amounts of soil with their powerful diesel trucks, which may
be nothing more than a thick piece of tree bark. Little girls also use construction
in their play, but tend to make finer and more delicate objects such as doll
clothes and paper dolls. They set up beautiful tea parties and arrange their
neat little house with a few empty cardboard boxes, a folding chair, and a spare
blanket. They love Grandma's old dresses and play endless hours as a beautiful
princess or fancily dressed ladies right out of old Victorian neighborhoods.
It is through the medium of play that a child first develops his sense of fairness
and cooperation and it is in play that moral strengths and weaknesses show up.
How your child moves the board game pieces, scores his game, follows the rules,
and shares with others reflects his developing moral identity. The child that
sulks because he didn't get his own way or bullies, manipulates, or quits a
game because he is not winning reveals much about a child's underdeveloped sense
of fairness, sharing, cooperation, and justice. Play not only reveals moral
strengths and weakness, but in the right or wrong environments, it can also
encourage both.
But such moral attitudes-healthy and not so healthy-develop early and are continually
reinforced by moral lessons taught throughout the day. Lessons in right and
wrong and consideration for others, drive a child's social experience. Children
do not like bullies and quitters, but they enjoy children who know how to play
by the rules and love to share. Your child's moral sense creates either a positive,
rewarding, and affirming response from other children or rejection. Most socialized
play will always have a moral component. How well prepared is your child?
Article
by Gary Ezzo / Anne Marie Ezzo
