The Value of Play - Patrice Vecchione

The deadline for the book I was writing was a mere week away. I was in the unkempt, frantic stage — hair unbrushed, efforts at dinner prep reduced to carrot sticks and hummus. Like certain other work, writing a book, especially with only three months in which to do so, is an intense, demanding process.

 

When my husband got home from work one afternoon, knowing where to find me, he walked into my office. Only I wasn’t there. “Babe?” he called out. “I’m out here.” He found me in our dining room that doubles as my art studio. There I was with a needle and thread in hand, stacks of fabric and paper spread on the table before me. Feeling a bit concerned, Michael casually asked, “Isn’t your book due soon?” One might rightly think that I was crazy to be anywhere other than in front of my computer at such a time.

 

But with art supplies before me, hotly engaged in creating a stitched collage that would bring me no money, little in the way of accolades, and for which there was no deadline, I wasn’t crazy; I was playing. And that was like removing the cork from a bottle of champagne. Making art caused me to bubble over. Momentarily, free and untethered, I was giddy with joy. In her book Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness, Ingrid Fetell Lee, wrote, “Play is one of our greatest means of accessing delight.”

 

Don’t get me wrong; I love writing books. But making the picture gave me a needed break from the fast-approaching deadline and rigor of my work. Suddenly, I was free to create for nobody’s pleasure but my own, without having to make sense or conform to an outline or anticipate my editor’s or anyone else’s feedback. The visual resonance of viewing a swatch of turquoise cotton next to a length of orange ribbon flooded my brain with endorphins. Stitching them together provided an immediate sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.

 

Had I not gotten up from my desk, my sense of overwhelm would have only grown stronger. By stepping back from my book, I regained a sense of balance as well as a return to my natural lightheartedness. My thinking became effervescent, less constrained, and more daring. I became inspired again. By making that picture, I was accomplishing more on my book than I would have had I remained glued to my computer screen.

 

Play is based within imagination, and when we imagine, remarkable things may occur. Imagination is the seed of all original thinking and the foundation of many of the most important discoveries and realizations that, throughout history, humans have made. When considering new ideas and possibilities, and by not taking ourselves too seriously, which is what play allows us to do, the mind can explore and experiment. Imaginative thinking — as a scientist, businessperson, artist, or child — leads one to think that comes only through freedom, randomness, optimism, faith, and creativity. In his book, Anthropology and Play: The Contours of Playful Experience, Thomas Malaby says, “Play becomes an attitude characterized by a readiness to improvise in the face of an ever-changing world.”

 

The story goes that despite putting in many hours, Einstein was puzzling unsuccessfully over one of his theories. He went out for a walk which helped his thinking become more relaxed, allowing him to make connections that were beyond linear, pragmatic thought. Feeling free, Einstein was able to improvise, to mentally play, and he arrived at the solution he’d been searching for. According to play theorist Brian Sutton-Smith, the act of playing — for adults and kids — is a natural response to such feelings as surprise, fear, anger, happiness, and sadness because it’s a way to express or “represent these feelings” so that we may gain a sense of control over our responses. Aha, so play is a way to cope with stress. Nice to know!

 

Sutton-Smith went on to say, “The opposite of play isn’t work; the opposite of play is depression,” and that leads me to ask, “Do you play?” If so, what kinds of activities meet your need for play — a game of tennis, a quiet walk through the forest, a morning on the golf course, time spent before your potter’s wheel, even singing in the shower? And do you notice a change between how you felt before engaging in this activity and how you feel afterward?

 

For adults and kids, Sutton-Smith noted, “Play is pleasure for its own sake.” Play has the appearance of being nonproductive, which is pretty much the antithesis to the dominant mode of the culture these days. Many of us tend to be driven by productivity, efficiency, and a desire for accomplishment. We are determined to “get somewhere.” It’s certainly true for me. But if we can begin to reorient our thinking and recognize that unstructured time and various forms of play will support us in accomplishing our goals, maybe that’ll get us out the door.

 

And possibly, quite literally, out the door. In my recent book, Step into Nature: Nurturing Imagination and Spirit in Everyday Life, I look at the many ways in which relaxed time in nature frees us from regulated, predictable thinking. When I’m out walking at Jacks Peak Park, Fort Ord or any number of local spots, my focus softens. My five senses come to the fore, and that gets me out of my head. I’m listening, smelling, looking, hearing (not so much tasting though). In nature, I become entranced by birds singing, by water running fast along a creek after a rain. My vision is taken by sweeping vistas, and I love watching the wind sway the Monterey Pines. I breathe more deeply and enjoy the rush of oxygen filling my lungs. My heart rate quickens healthfully, increasing the flood of endorphins. That alone can increase one’s sense of joy.

 

It used to be that children played freely, often outdoors. Maybe that’s what your childhood was like. My mother used to say, “Go outside and play — now!” I’d knock on a neighbor’s door, and Bonnie or Alexandra and I would play together with our dolls, or we’d make up games that required nothing more than ourselves and our vibrant imaginations. If there were a few other kids whose mothers had also sent them out, we’d play hide-and-seek or tag or race our bikes down the barely traveled street. We might pretend to be queens or animals. One summer, Alexandra and I spent weeks being squirrels. Make-believe was our domain. Anthropology professor Melvin Konner said that in pretend play, “children reveal more about what they know and can do than in other activities.”

 

Make-believe also meant being freely physical — skipping, running, and jumping. One Chicago winter during the biggest blizzard in years, the neighborhood kids did what no parent nowadays would allow — we built a tunnel tall enough for children to walk through from one end of Dorchester Avenue to the other. We became arctic explorers surviving the harsh elements — until the snow melted, that is. No parents monitored that or any of our street games. If we had problems with each other, for the most part, we solved them ourselves. Outside together, we discovered firsthand what it means to be a part of a community because that’s what we were.

 

Pretend, undirected play, the kind kids don’t do enough of now, isn’t just fun; it also helps children develop the thinking skill of executive function. Included in that is a child’s ability to self-regulate. Kids who are skilled at self-regulation are better able to control their emotions as well as their behavior. Over the years, children’s ability to do this has diminished. Psychologist Elena Bodrova said, “Today’s 5-year-olds were acting at the level of 3-year-olds 60 years ago, and today’s 7-year-olds were barely approaching the level of a 5-year-old 60 years ago.”

 

According to a National Public Radio article, the loss of these skills “is associated with high dropout rates, drug use, and crime. In fact, good executive function is a better predictor of success in school than a child’s IQ.” Not only does the lack of the ability to self-regulate emotions and behavior influence academic success in school, but the kids getting in trouble in the classroom are often those who don’t know how to consider their actions before taking them.

 

It appears that having children’s play organized and directed by adults has negative consequences. While playing unsupervised, children learn how to get along and gain skills in negotiating, handling frustration, and dealing with failure. One girl might feel personal success because she got to the top of the climbing structure with her friend or on her own. Not a mom there, anywhere. The freedom I had to bike to school taught me to be responsible for myself. My parents rightly trusted me to look both ways for traffic and to not talk to strangers. For success in life, children need to develop into independent thinkers, and the only way to do this is for them to experiment, to make mistakes, to recover from them, and to find solutions. To become practiced in life, kids need to live life, their own lives!

 

In her book How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kids for Success, Julie Lythcott-Haims makes several suggestions to parents to help children become strong and self-reliant. She says, “In conversation about your children, don’t refer to their work by using “we.” “We” are not on the soccer team…” and “Stop arguing with the adults in your children’s lives. Kids need to learn to advocate for themselves.”

 

Allowing kids to solve some of their own problems and to self-regulate requires parents and other caretakers to have faith in the children. That requires having confidence in the job you are doing raising those kids. It means standing behind your children, not standing for them. And when they make mistakes, so be it. Think back on the failures you’ve lived through in your personal and professional life. Do you, like me, recall not only their sting but the sense of satisfaction and strength that came through working things out?

 

We are lucky to live in a place with such abundant access to the great outdoors. Just walking along the beach and playing in the waves with your partner or your kids is more than simple fun. It turns out that being playful may be exactly what we need to have fulfilling and successful lives. Next time you’re hard at work on something and begin to feel frustrated or overwhelmed, you might reach for your son’s box of crayons and feel the soothing quality of a crayon moving across the paper. Notice how you soon feel freer and more able to take on whatever task you’d found daunting earlier.

 

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I made my deadline, and just heard back from my editor who said, “I’m loving your book!” A dose of play into your life might just be the best medicine there is.