The Holistic Parent
Your child, your choice
WHY SHOULD CHILDREN PLAY?
Written by Shelina Ladha BA, MA, MSc, PGCE, PGDip
Educational Psychologist and Counsellor/Therapist
Contact details: - 07961382123
Every child is a unique and exceptional individual whose needs should be respected, valued and understood. All children have their own characteristics and personalities and come into the world ready to learn, participate and be stimulated by other people and their environment.
Early relationships and experiences strongly influence and shape how children develop and learn. Understanding and supporting babies and children to develop a positive sense of themselves and encouraging them to explore and discover their competencies in contexts that are meaningful to them is the starting point for learning. Babies and children thrive on interaction and communication. They become resilient, confident and learn new skills through trusting key and consistent adults who engage positively and empathically with them.
Children learn many skills and attitudes through play. Their curiosity and exploratory impulses should be nurtured and encouraged in order to help them to increase independence, build confidence, take initiatives and manage developmentally appropriate tasks.
Throughout the literature there is widespread acceptance that play has positive effects. Children’s play reflects their wide ranging and varied interests. Within play activities children usually choose to undertake more freely, activities of their own choosing. They are often personally directed and may or may not take place with an adult. When children have opportunities to play with ideas in different situations and with a variety of resources, they discover connections and come to new and better understandings and ways of doing things. As children become more mobile, new opportunities for exploration open up. A safe and interesting environment helps children to develop curiosity, co-ordination, physical abilities, self-control, and social skills.
An interest in play as a means of helping children to learn became evident in the 1920’s with Freud’s work highlighting the emotional aspects of play, ie play as providing one of the ways in which children learn to control their feelings and deal with anxieties. Piaget’s theories of how children take in and make sense of their world and experiences took play to another level in the 1940’s with attention shifting to the importance of play in cognitive development.
Research over time has highlighted the importance of play in relation to a number of other key areas and skills including problem solving, language, literacy and social development. Play enables children to be curious, inventive and persistent without the pressure or fear of making mistakes that is otherwise associated with having to achieve or needing to learn.
Health benefits of play and the physical activity involved in energetic and active play is recognized to encourage co-ordination and physical skills. Play also enhances children’s mental health by building self esteem, independence and respect for others and can foster resilience, tolerance and compromise. Within a stimulating environment young children’s learning will be enhanced as they are active learners who are quick to absorb information by using all their senses within the structures provided in order to build concepts and ideas from their experiences.
Play is a key way in which young children can learn with enjoyment and challenge.
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