Can I Go and Play Now?. Greg Bottrill
lucky enough to get to the door first to go out in the garden or outside space. We need to throw off our preconceptions of what play is. Play is freedom, so let it be free.
‘Child is father of the man/The Mother and the Wife/The child enjoys the longest days/And the longest life ...’ – Father, Mother, Wife and Child, The Lilac Time
At some point in our lives play seems to stop
It’s as though there’s a day for all of us when imagination and wonder get put away in a suitcase and stored in a wardrobe. Responsibility, relationships, self-image, bills, the news, fear: our growth seems to rely on this day arriving. It’s like going to the opticians, putting on your new glasses and discovering that there is a real world out there with focus and clear edges. As soon as we see this world, it’s as though we begin to emerge out of the cocoon of childhood. I’m not sure it falls on one particular day, but the process of things from the past seeming ‘childish’ does appear to happen quickly for most of us. A child’s eyes see the wonder and space behind and in everything – our teenage selves learn to blind ourselves to this and refocus on a different reality.
Therefore, as adults we need to keep children in their world of wonder for as long as possible, or at least not drag them out of it before they are ready. Responsibility to varying degrees comes to us all eventually, as do the attraction of boys or girls. Hormones kick in. So do spots. These changes bring about a seismic shift in our identities as we enter a phase that moves us away from our parents and their world and into a world of independence and decision-making. We are clearly talking about our teenage years here – the space of music, love, lust, self-discovery and preparation for the adult world.
Again, as an adult, you must be able to recognise this. You yourself went on this journey. You left childhood and entered your teenage years. If they were anything like mine, then it was a time of great confusion, ever-changing moods, crying over girls and locking yourself in your bedroom listening to The Smiths to find at least some solace in the angst-pop of Morrissey, Marr, Joyce and Rourke.
Ultimately, it was a time of life in which you most probably felt very out of control and hugely unsure. I yearned to be a child again, threw myself in to reading Winnie The Pooh and even making models with Lego but to no avail. Kicking and screaming (sometimes literally), I was dragged by my own body and societal expectations through a mental and bodily landscape that I didn’t recognise or have a map for.
And yet now on the other side, I do have some kind of map, some awareness of what it was I went through. I’m watching my own daughter at the age of 15 now beginning this very journey. Now no teenage girl particularly wants to hear the sage wisdom of her middle-aged dad, so I try not to be Advice Man as best I can. Perhaps we’re meant to go through this phase of our lives by ourselves and literally make up our own minds. I don’t know. What I do know is that every adult alive today has gone through the journey. Every adult has gone through the struggle, the resentment, the ups and downs, the loves and heartbreak. We’ve all been on the adventure and are still going on it now that we’re adults whether that involves travel, holding down a 9 to 5 job or emptying the kitchen bin.
The point is that you know the journey that you went through. You know deep down that childhood doesn’t last. You know just how challenging and hard the adult world can be. Yes, you can drink, stay out for as long as you want, Tinder to your heart’s content, but you also know that the adult world has a paradoxical complexity and regimentation that makes it pretty messed up at times. So if you know it, then shouldn’t you be considering the wonder of childhood and how your children are enabled to experience this when you are in the classroom with them? Does it not pain you that we are stifling childhood and in turn potentially inhibiting the next generation of would-be dreamers, explorers, doers and makers?
We need to ensure that children get enough childhood ahead of the teen phase
We need to give children significant opportunity to engage with one another, express themselves and grow the skills that they will need prior to teenagehood. And what is the one key component of this pre-teenage phase? Play. We cannot just give a nod to it while pressing the photocopier button to unleash the next series of worksheets. We cannot just tip Lego in a tray while sitting Red Group at a table to fill out missing words in a cloze sentence. If the child is truly the father of the man and we want to enable this person to be well rounded, loving, able to control him- or herself, collaborate with others, have ambition and, dare I say it, have dreams, then we must embrace the power of play.
Play creates the conditions for children to test the world, to make sense of it, to grow the skills needed to communicate, to negotiate and express their inner selves. And, of course, we’re talking here about Real Play – Real Play that has been enabled by your effective environment and your considered skill-driven continuous provision; Real Play that is accepting of children’s voices and need for freedom to make them heard; and Real Play that is not encumbered by the adult world.
If you know what awaits beyond childhood and if you understand the value of Real Play, then shouldn’t you be exploring every avenue to make this happen? Is it not time to put play at the heart of all you do? Life is too short, dear reader, to do anything else.
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