Child's Play

This week I had the opportunity to play with two of my dear friends, Leah and Levi. They are my best friend Krystal's kiddos. Leah is 7 and Levi is 4. They were supposed to be getting ready for bed, but we ended up playing instead. They both got out their pillow pets as well as their Yoohoo friends. We all had one pillow pet and one yoohoo friend. Each of us represented a different family, with the pillow pet being the dad and the yoohoo friend being the daughter or son. Levi gave his dad and yoohoo friend arbitrary names, and while Leah gave her yoohoo friend an arbitrary name, she gave her pillow pet dad the same name as her dad. I thought this was interesting, and aligns well with some of the ideas from Chapter 3 of Sutton-Smith's book The Ambiguity of Play. In a way, Leah is playing at reality- naming her pillow pet after her dad.

As we played, Leah and Levi decided that our yoohoo friends would jump on their dads. Of course, the dads were none to pleased with their children jumping on them and sent them all to bed early. Little did the dads know, however, that their children would refuse to go to sleep and rather would stay up all night. Throughout the night the children would jump on their dads backs again, but would scurry away as soon as the dads woke up. They rarely got caught.

I had so much fun playing with these kids! I loved seeing their imagination at work. I played with them before reading the chapter from Sutton-Smith, so it was really interesting reading the chapter with this experience in mind.

I'm not sure how I feel about the role of play in a child's life after reading this chapter. I have always agreed with Vygotsky's assertion that play leads cognitive development by creating a zone of proximal development. While Sutton-Smith doesn't necessarily disagree with this idea, he does complicate the notion of play as developmental. Even though Vygotsky theorized about play different than Piaget (play preceding development as opposed to development preceding play), there are still problems with assuming play is somehow developmental. It's difficult to say in this experience whether or not Leah and Levi were developing in some way. It is clear, at least to me, that they were playing with the rules of reality. Rules like going to bed at a certain time and obeying your parents were up for breaking. Both Leah and Levi are very well behaved children in reality, and very rarely outright disobey their parents and rules. However, in play, they are safe and comfortable (thinking back to Artin Goncü's discussion) to break these rules. There is no real consequence for doing so, and for a moment both get to experience in some way the feeling of breaking these rules.

Considering my own involvement and experience in this play, I find Sutton-Smith's discussion of adult play particularly germane. Describing older folks in Florida golfing, Sutton-Smith writes, "What their play seems to be, besides just a way to get out of doors in a pleasant place with pleasant company to pass the time, is an assertion of the possibility of skill and persistence in the face of increasing evidence to the contrary." (p. 48) I find that this is true for me- while part of me plays simply because I love these kids, there is a part of me that wants to feel young again. And I realize that at 28 years old I am still very young. But I want to feel as though I'm 7 again- with no worries and no real responsibilities. I want to play with the rules of adulthood by casting them aside, and proving that despite my ever increasing age, I still have the ability to play.

One thing that is clear to me after playing with Leah and Levi; I absolutely agree with Erickson, as quoted in Sutton-Smith, "Longitudinal research showing that the more interesting and fulfilling lives are those in which playfulness was kept at the center of things." (p. 39). I find that my life is much more interesting and fulfilling when I make time for play.