Celebrating Our Free Play of 2012

My kids are always up to something- which of course, is wonderful and horrible ( for housekeeping) all at the same time.  :)  Here is a glimpse into M and G's creative play this past year.  I really enjoyed looking back through my pictures to find all of these.  It's so true that children really know how to have fun.

Lettuce Hats!

"Dyeing" string.  For days, the girls' favorite thing to do was to fill the kiddie pool with water, dissolve sidewalk chalk in it, and dip string in the colored water to "dye" it.  They had great plans for the colorful clothes they would make with their finished products.

Mattress Trampolines.  One afternoon after naps I heard a tremendous bouncing upstairs.  When I arrived in the girls' room I saw this scene.  They had stripped all of the covers off the top mattress and piled them below the bed.  Then they leaned the top mattress against the boxspring to make a kind of trampoline slide.  This arrangement allowed for jumping all the way down, rolling, and everything in between!

Shoe Buses.  Apparently, my enormous Crocs make perfect transport vehicles for little people.

Fishing in the Spinkler.  The drought the past couple of years has left lots of dead bamboo in our yard.  The girls grabbed this pole to use for a fishing rod.  

Smush Face.  This clear plastic sheet is actually a frame for children's artwork for display on the refrigerator.  (Very clever idea, by the way).  The girls though find it equally fun as a window for smushing their faces.  They love for me to take pictures of their poses and come running afterward to giggle at the results in the camera display.  

Pioneer Wagon.  I don't remember now what arrived in this large Amazon box.  But I do remember the fun the girls had using it and the packaging inside for a wagon.

Nativity Role Play.  The girls were very aware of the Nativity story for the month leading up to Christmas this year.  They were forever drawing manger scenes, cutting them out and dressing each other as characters in the story.  Here is a shepherd escaping to the bathroom.  

Free style Creations with leftover craft materials.  Such a fun, whimsical fellow he is.  I just love him!

What fun kinds of playing have your kids invented this year?  Please describe or give a link in the comments.  I know I would enjoy reading about them/ seeing pictures.

Musical Golf Clubs

Can you tell what this is? It's two little girls with golf clubs connected by a nylon loop "scarf" twirling and dancing around the room to world folk songs. It has become a daily ritual around our house these days and lasts for almost an hour every time.

This activity certainly beats out any activity I've ever planned.  Kids know how to make fun (and exercise!)

(Pay no attention to the basket of laundry in the corner...you'd think with the kids entertaining themselves this well, I'd have time to put away a little laundry!)

One-Sided Parental Vigilance

Does anyone else sense an inconsistency in the “repsonsible parenting world” in the emphasis on proper food monitoring for children versus the lack of emphasis on filtering children’s entertainment?

Parents are increasingly conscientious about what their children physically consume- that it be  organic, hormone- free, nutrient -rich, low in sugar, low in sodium, unprocessed, etc.   But discussions with any sort of analogous standards for entertainment are conspicuously missing. 

Take parenting magazines or parenting blogs, for example. Articles on how to achieve these kinds of goals for a child’s physical body outnumber articles about discretion in entertainment by a significant margin.

Why is this the case?  The entertainment industry is no less exploitative of children for the sake of their own bottom line.  I’m convinced that they are every bit as indifferent to a child’s true well-being as the fast food industries are, for example.

And it’s not as if it mattered less.  Certainly, the effects of entertainment on a child’s inner person strike more centrally at his or her humanity, and I would argue- are more difficult to reverse than the physical issues.

Sometimes I’ve wondered if part of the problem is simple exhaustion.  A parent can only be hyper vigilant about so much.  The amount of time required to keep up with the latest research, track down the healthiest foods, and the energy it takes to enforce good eating standards on resistant children can leave a mom feeling a bit pooped. 

As politically incorrect as this may be, I’d like to suggest that parents who find themselves in this boat give themselves permission to relax a little in the food department.  Some parents certainly manage to achieve vigilance in both areas (and personally, I am full of admiration) but as a general rule, it seems to me that the entertainment side of things often suffers.  In particular, I would really like to see more discussion of:

• the effect of stock, commercial characters on imaginative play
•  the subtle ways that media and toys can undermine the values a family hopes to instill
•  addiction to sensationalism in children’s media
•  the pressure that children can feel from the media to grow up quickly
• the ironic uniformity of taste that commercial media breeds in children (while often simultaneously touting non-conformity as a high value)

Why do you think talk about eliminating unhealthy entertainment is not a bigger part of the discussion on responsible parenting?  What in regard to children’s entertainment would you like to see discussed more often?

13 Things Parents Do that Inhibit Real Play

If you've been reading my blog for a while you know that I have a passion for a return to "real play"-- the kind children enjoyed 100 years ago-- the kind that adults remember with fondness-- and that is more and more rare these days.  I tried to pin down some of its defining characteristics in my post here.

Since that time I've been tossing around in my head thoughts from experience and observation concerning things that parents (myself included) sometimes do to unintentionally inhibit real play.

This is what I have so far:

1.  Try to keep children from ever getting dirty.  So...ahem...I could be accused of going a little overboard with this one.  My kids are constantly getting dirty, and  lot of times I regret it.  But I do think there is some real value in making room for the mess.

You only have to take a look at the multitude of "sensory bins" and play dough recipes that are all over the internet these days to realize that kids have a real need for sensory experiences.  Mud and dirt are the ultimate sensory materials. 

2. Go along with our culture's message to little kids that they should try to be "cool" instead of feeling free to enjoy childish play (skate boards and sunglasses, makeup and dating vs baby dolls and toy dump trucks)

3.  Fill their day with too many planned activities.  Some structure is good, but real play needs good long spaces to ripen.   Imaginative play especially requires stretches of time- especially if it is going to be the kind of fiction to which they return again and again.

I think our culture is generally better at recognizing this need in very young children, but in my experience, older kids need it too.  Their imaginative fictions get more complex; they start acting out ideas from books or eras of history.  My older kids have a group of friends who play variations of "loyalists" and "patriots" whenever they get together.  It's a story that has been going on for months, and if my own experience is any indication, they will likely treasure that ongoing story.

(a town I constructed out of magazine cut outs and paper.  I played for hours with this town)

4.  Provide no boundaries.  Children feel safer exploring and playing freely when they feel there are limits.

5.  Allow too much tv time or video game time. I've noticed it as an interesting phenomenon that the more tv my kids watch, the more they seem to be grumpily anxious to watch more.  A week long fast from media every once in a while (or even a few days) usually does wonders to re-set my kids.

6.  Hover or praise too much.  (creates self-conscious, parent-driven play)

7.  Laugh at their imagination without gentleness.  I have to be careful of this one if there are other adults around.  Sometimes the things kids do or say are just so funny from an adult perspective, but kids are very sensitive to the difference between being laughed "with" versus "at." If you don't want a behavior to stop, be careful not to poke fun at it. 

8.  Give them toys that provide too much entertainment for too little work.  At the push of a single button so many baby toys go absolutely crazy with flashing lights, music, voices.  A child should have to work at the reward a little bit. 

9.  Worry too much about injury.  My mother always treated risks of permanent injuries very seriously (brain damage, paralysis, etc) but if the only real danger was breaking an arm or scraping a leg then we were free to be adventurous and learn from our own mistakes. 

10.  Insist that furniture and toys be confined to their original uses.  Not only can you come up with some super fun ways to play this way, but it may help develop lateral intelligence.

(an old couch that our parents let us have some fun with before they got rid of it)

11.  Grant a wish for toys as soon as the child expresses an interest.  A big spark for creativity for my siblings and me growing up was the fact that we didn't have a swimming pool and we REALLY wanted one. We created so many make-shift pools on our own (pickup truck bed, ditch in our yard, etc) and really enjoyed doing it! 

12.  Treat the eradication of their boredom as the parents' responsibility.  In our family, going back several generations now, a child's "I'm bored" would elicit a stern, "Well, then I'll FIND you something to do!" and the result would be hard work! We quickly learned to keep any boredom to ourselves :-)  As an adult I am almost never bored, and I think that's at least in part because I learned as a child how to occupy and entertain myself. 

13.  Don't expect any chores out of them.  When children have to work part of the day it makes them treasure their free time more.  Also work stimulates children mentally and physically.

I'd love to hear your perspective on the kinds of things that inhibit real play!

10 Characteristics of Real Play

There is a certain kind of playing that makes for a magical childhood. Adults look back on the memories of those times with fond wistfulness.

Not all playing fits into this category; a lot of it is just filler and so is quickly forgotten. Other kinds of fun serve valuable purposes but do not qualify as "real playing" (For example, I think educational and athletic activities are great and have their place, but they do not fully capitalize on the uniqueness of childhood the way that real playing does).

So what IS real playing? I've been mulling over that question for a long time. To a certain extent, it is difficult to define, and you just know it when you see it.

I've been thinking lately though about the conversations my siblings and I have when we get together and noting the memories we return to again and again. As I've thought about it, I think I've been able to distill out certain common characteristics of the playing that made up those memories.

This list is my best stab at identifying real play. Please do leave additional thoughts in the comments section (illustrations, additional characteristics, disagreements, whatever!)

Real Play --

1. Is child directed- an adult might find unobtrusive ways to lend support or occasionally spark a fun idea, but the children have a sense of ownership over the style of play.

2. Makes innovative use of the objects available. Not dependent on expensive toys and props.

3. Is focused- Doesn't flit restlessly from toy to toy or activity to activity.

4. Has longevity- Children will return to the same kind of play over the course of days, weeks or even years. Sometimes there is a feeling of urgency to get back to it.

5. Is sometimes inspired by stories from real life or fiction, but not tied to them. The stories are just the jumping-off points. Real play develops the life of the mind and creates an inner world.

6. Is complex- Real play develops its own history, rules, and private jokes over time.

7. Almost always has a child- given name. "Let's go play Jibber Jumpers!" etc.

8. Is treated by children with a certain seriousness. At some level they feel there is something more important going on that just having fun. Hence the need for secrecy, passwords, sober explanations to those they take into their confidence, etc.

9. Often involves working toward the completion of a lofty goal- building a little house, making a road, digging a swimming pool, etc.

10. Is marked by an absence of self-consciousness. Children are free to giggle and be silly and carefree in a way that they wouldn't be if they felt they had an audience.

Stay tuned for part 3 of this little series - How to encourage real playing at your house and Part 4 - Things we as parents sometimes do to inadvertently discourage it.