Children Can Learn These 3 Life Skills Through Play
Why play is more important than you think …
Play is what all mammals do. It is a natural and vital aspect of development. Yet, we are seeing a steady decline in play in children. Sadly, the deprivation of play is can have serious repercussions on mental health and emotional wellbeing.
For most parents and educators, play is looked upon as frivolous since a child’s learning is largely associated with acquiring specific skillsets like memorising the alphabet or achieving academic milestones.
However, a recent publication of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), The Power of Play has highlighted the contribution of free, child-driven, creative play to a child’s cognitive, physical, social, and emotional development.
My experiences with young children as an early childhood educator have helped me gain first-hand insights into how valuable play is.
When a child is allowed and encouraged to participate in free and unstructured play, they are given a space to think, be creative, solve problems, build sustained attention, develop interpersonal skills and express themselves better — all skills key to succeeding holistically in life!
Let’s talk about some of these advantages of play in detail:
1. Encourages Creative Thinking
When children aren’t told what to play or how to do it, they will naturally find creative ways to deploy the materials around them.
Create spaces for your child to indulge with open-ended play materials rather than structured toys.
For instance, when given a cardboard box, the child approaches it with endless possibilities of building a fort, a car, a house and tearing them down to rebuild it again as something new whereas a train set can be played with in one way only.
Encourage children to play beyond the ‘one known way.’
Ask guiding questions like, “If you had to add two new characters to the story, what would they be?” or “I’m so proud that you made this house by yourself, but would you also like to experiment with the blocks to create something different?”
2. Fosters Cognitive Growth
Free play is a way for children to exercise autonomy in their actions without any adult intervention.
This encourages the child’s ability to initiate and plan like, “I’ll be the doctor, and you can be the patient.” or “I can use these blocks to make a ship.”
Unstructured play also invites children to seek solutions for emerging problems while playing like, “My car requires another wheel but I just have only three round pieces so, what else can I use?” while constantly creating a space for them to learn from their mistakes like, “If I’ll jump on a cardboard box, it’ll break” or “If I press the crayons too hard, the paper tears”.
“When a child is playing independently, they are engaging themselves using their imagination, and from very early childhood they are being independent,” says Syeda Sazia Zaman from BRAC Institute of Educational Development.
This also develops a “leader attitude” in the child and inspires them to be imaginative and take initiative.
3. Enhances Interpersonal Skills
Play creates spaces for a child to practice effective verbal and non-verbal communication with the environment around them. Peer interactions during the play allow the child to practice their vocabulary and pick up new words.
According to research on child behaviour, during social play, children often reciprocate each other’s words and actions to reach agreements. Encourage your child to identify their feelings, and name them.
For instance, “when you were left out in the game in the morning, how did it make you feel? Or when your friend knocked down your structure did you feel angry or upset?”
Unstructured play also allows the development of the child’s interpersonal skills as they interact, and engage with dialogues to share ideas and resolve conflicts.
As adults, we can check in with children and create spaces for them to share their experiences like, “You shared you wanted to play with Rajni but she was not being your friend. Were you both friends again today?”
Conclusion:
I believe that all children are natural scientists and are innately curious and creative. But in order for these qualities to sprout, parents and caregivers must provide the right environment.
Opportunities for free play is an easy and unskippable way to aid your child’s growth in all aspects. Once you deploy these simple methods of free play and understand their significance, you are sure to witness a great degree of positive change in your child.
Just remember, your job is to only provide a safe environment and let children take the lead when it comes to playing the right way!
