6.3 Play

Same Situation, Far Apart: Culture Clash? Both children wear Muslim headwear. Although he is in Noida, India, and she is in an alley in Pakistan, both carry universal toys—a toy car and a bride doll, identical to those found in any city in Canada.

BURHAAN KINU/HINDUSTAN TIMES VIA GETTY IMAGES
ILYAS DEAN/THE IMAGE WORKS

Play is timeless and universal—apparent in every part of the world for thousands of years. Many developmentalists believe that play is the most productive as well as the most enjoyable activity that children undertake (Elkind, 2007; Frost, 2009; Smith, 2010). Whether play is essential for normal growth or is merely a fun activity that has developmental benefits is somewhat controversial (Pellegrini, 2011). There are echoes of this controversy in the variations in preschool education that were explained in Chapter 5. Some educators want children to focus on reading and math skills; others predict emotional and academic problems for children who rarely play (Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2009; Pellegrini, 2009; Rubin et al., 2009).

Play is so universally valued that the United Nations has explicitly recognized it as a specific right for all children. Article 31 of its Convention on the Rights of the Child states: “Parties recognize the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts” (United Nations Human Rights, 1990).

It is worth noting that when the province of Ontario implemented a full-day kindergarten program for 4- and 5-year-olds in 2010, the curriculum was entirely play-based. Activities include both child-initiated play and more structured play-based learning opportunities meant to develop literacy, numeracy, language acquisition, and social and problem-solving skills (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2010).

Playmates and Friendships

Young children play best with peers, that is, people of about the same age and social status. Two-year-olds are not yet good playmates: They might throw a ball and expect another child to throw it back, but most other 2-year-olds will keep it. By contrast, most 6-year-olds are quite skilled: They can gain entry to a peer group, manage conflict, take turns, find friends, and keep playmates. Over those years, social play with peers teaches emotional regulation, empathy, and cultural understanding (Göncü & Gaskins, 2011).

Through friendships, young children are able to learn and master age-graded tasks as friendships provide a forum for learning and refining of socioemotional skills. Through these peer interactions, children learn to cooperate and understand different perspectives; friendships also meet the needs for intimacy (Rubin et al., 1998).

For young children, friendships are typically play-oriented dyads that socialize children into group life (Hartup & Stevens, 1997). By age 5 or 6, children have a more complex understanding of friendship that includes mutual trust and support, and being able to count on their friend over time, which are important aspects of distinguishing between friends and peers (Hay et al., 2004). As Canadian researcher Kenneth Rubin (2004) stated, at all ages, individuals engage in more complicated social activity, talk, task orientation, cooperation, negotiation, prosocial activity, positive affect, and effective conflict management with their friends than with non-friends.

Whether playing with peers or friends, there is a tendency for sex segregation early in life. Children prefer to interact with peers of their own sex; this is called sex homophily. By preschool, about half of children’s interactions are only with the same sex, while less than 10 percent of interactions are with only other-sex peer (Fabes et al., 2003). These segregated styles of interactions have important consequences for development (Leaper, 1994; Maccoby, 1998). For example, boys’ interactions are rougher and more active (Fabes et al., 2003), whereas girls focus more on cooperation (Maccoby, 1990). So, do children seek same-sex peers because of sex homophily or because they share the same interests in toys and activities (activity homophily)?

There is evidence that children use both the gender of their peers as well as their shared interests when deciding whether they will play with them. As children play together, they reinforce the expected levels of engagement in gender-typed activities, which, in turn, further strengthens the tendencies for sex-segregation (Martin et al., 2013).

There is an obvious task for parents: to find playmates for their children who can later become friends. Even the most playful parent is outmatched by a child at negotiating the rules of tag, at play-fighting, at pretending to be on a picnic, or at slaying dragons. Specifics vary, but “play with peers is one of the most important areas in which children develop positive social skills” (Xu, 2010).

Cultural Differences in Play

All young children play, and a child playing is a sign of healthy development (Gosso, 2010). Children create dramas that reflect their culture and they play games passed down from older generations. Chinese children fly kites, Inuit children tell dreams and stories, Lapp children pretend to be reindeer, Cameroon children hunt mice, and so on. All children also play in ways that are similar in every culture, such as throwing and catching; pretending to be adults; and drawing with chalk, markers, sticks, and other instruments. Everywhere, play is the prime activity of young children.

Play Ball! In every nation, young children play with balls, but the specific games they play vary with the culture. Soccer is the favourite game in many countries, including Brazil, where these children are practising their dribbling on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro.

REUTERS/SERGIO MORAES

Although play is universal, not only do specifics differ but so do frequency and playmates. When adults are concerned with basic survival, they rarely play with their children. Children play with each other instead, but they do not spend as much time playing as children in less impoverished communities (Kalliala, 2006; Roopnarine, 2011).

As children grow older, play becomes more social, influenced not only by the availability of playmates, but also by the physical setting (a small playroom, a large park, a wild hillside). One developmentalist bemoans the twenty-first century’s “swift and pervasive rise of electronic media” and adults who lean “more toward control than freedom.” He praises children who find places to play independently and who “conspire [in finding] ways to elude adult management” (Chudacoff, 2011). This opinion may be extreme, but it is echoed in more common concerns.

Before the electronic age, young children played outside with neighbourhood children, often of both sexes and several ages. The youngest children learned from the older ones. American sociologist Mildred Parten (1932) was one of the first to describe the development of social play from ages 1 to 6. She distinguished five kinds of play, each more advanced than the previous one:

1. Solitary play: A child plays alone, unaware of any other children playing nearby.
2. Onlooker play: A child watches other children play.
3. Parallel play: Children play with similar objects in similar ways, but not together.
4. Associative play: Children interact, sharing material, but their play is not reciprocal.
5. Cooperative play: Children play together, creating dramas or taking turns.

As already mentioned, play is affected by culture and context, and both of these have changed since Parten’s day. Many Asian parents teach 3-year-olds to take turns, share, and otherwise cooperate. On the other hand, many North American children, at age 6 and older, engage in parallel play, especially in school, where each child has a desk. Given all the social, political, and economic changes over the past century, various forms of social play (not necessarily in Parten’s sequence) may be age-appropriate (Xu, 2010).

Active Play

Children need physical activity to develop muscle strength and control. Peers provide an audience, role models, and sometimes competition. For instance, running skills develop best when children chase or race each other, not when a child runs alone. Gross motor play is favoured among young children, who enjoy climbing, kicking, and tumbling (Case-Smith & Kuhaneck, 2008).

Active social play—not solitary play—correlates with peer acceptance and a healthy self-concept (Nelson et al., 2008; Smith, 2010) and may help regulate emotions (Sutton-Smith, 2011)—something adults might remember when they wish their children were immobile and quiet. Among non-human primates, deprivation of social play warps later life, rendering some monkeys unable to mate, to make friends, or even to survive with other monkeys (Herman et al., 2011; Palagi, 2011).

Active play advances planning and self-control. Two-year-olds merely chase and catch each other, but older children keep the interaction fair, long-lasting, and fun. In tag, for instance, they set rules (adjusted to location) and each child decides how far to venture from base. If one child is “It” for too long, another child (often a friend) makes himself easy to be caught.

Rough-And-Tumble PlayThe most common form of active play is called rough-and-tumble because it looks quite rough and because the children seem to tumble over one another. The term was coined by British scientists who studied primates in East Africa (Blurton-Jones, 1976). They noticed that monkeys often chased, attacked, rolled over in the dirt, and wrestled quite roughly, but without hurting one another. If a young monkey wanted rough-and-tumble play, all it had to do was come close, catch the eye of a peer, and then run a few metres. The invitation was almost always accepted, with a play face (smiling, not angry). Puppies, kittens, and chimps do the same thing.

When the scientists returned to London, they saw that human youngsters, like baby monkeys, also enjoy rough-and-tumble play (Pellegrini & Smith, 2005). They chase, wrestle, and grab each other, developing games like tag and cops and robbers, with play faces, lots of running, and various conventions, expressions, and gestures that children use to signify “just pretend.”

Rough-and-tumble play happens everywhere (although “cops and robbers” can be “robots and humans” or one of many other iterations). It is particularly common among young males (human and otherwise) who are friends, playing in ample space with minimal supervision (Berenbaum et al., 2008; Hassett et al., 2008).

Many scientists think that rough-and-tumble play helps the prefrontal cortex develop, as children learn to regulate emotions, practise social skills, and strengthen their bodies (Pellegrini et al., 2007; Pellis & Pellis, 2011). Indeed, some believe that play in childhood, especially rough-and-tumble play between boys and their fathers, may prevent antisocial behaviour later on (Wenner, 2009).

Drama and PretendingAnother major type of active play is sociodramatic play, in which children act out various roles and plots. Through sociodramatic play children

• explore and rehearse social roles
• learn how to explain their ideas and convince playmates to agree
• practise emotional regulation by pretending to be afraid, angry, brave, and so on
• develop self-concept in a non-threatening context.

Sociodramatic play builds on pretending, which emerges in toddlerhood. But preschoolers do more than pretend; they combine their own imagination with that of others, advancing in theory of mind as they do so (Kavanaugh, 2011). The beginnings of sociodramatic play are illustrated by this pair, a 3-year-old girl and a 2-year-old boy. The girl wants to act out the role of a baby, and she persuades a boy in her nursery school to join her.

A Toy Machine Gun These boys in Liberia are doing what young children everywhere do—following adult example. Whenever countries are at war, children play solders, rebels, heroes, or spies

MIKE GOLDWATER/ALAMY

Note the social interaction in this form of play. The girl directed and played her part, sometimes accepting what the boy said and sometimes not. The boy took direction, yet also made up his own dialogue and actions (“Bad boy”).

Older children are much more elaborate in their sociodramatic play, evident in four boys, about age 5, in a daycare centre in Finland. Joni plays the role of the evil one who menaces the other boys; Tuomas directs the drama and acts in it as well.

Good versus evil is a favourite theme of boys’ sociodramatic play. In contrast, girls often act out domestic scenes. Such gender differences are found in many cultures. In the same daycare centre where Joni piles mattresses on his playmates, the girls say their play is “more beautiful and peaceful…[but] boys play all kinds of violent games” (Kalliala, 2006).

Although gender differences in sociodramatic play are found universally, the prevalence of such play varies. Some cultures find it frivolous and discourage it, while in other cultures parents teach toddlers to be lions, or robots, or ladies drinking tea, and children develop elaborate and extensive play (Kavanaugh, 2011).

The New Media

As mentioned above, one of today’s great challenges is the influence of electronic media. All media—television, the Internet, electronic games, and so on—can be harmful, especially when the content is violent (Anderson et al., 2007, 2008; Bailey et al., 2010; Gentile et al., 2007; Smyth, 2007).

Electronic media for young children has become a multi-million-dollar industry, seeking profit through the education and entertainment of billions of young viewers (Steemers, 2010). Some children learn from educational videos, especially if adults watch with them and reinforce the lessons. However, children rarely select educational programs over fast-paced cartoons, in which everyone hits, shoots, and kicks.

The problem is not only that violent media teach aggression, but also that even nonviolent media take time from constructive interaction and creative play. Social interaction among family members is reduced when a TV is on, whether or not anyone is watching (Kirkorian et al., 2009).

The 2007–2009 Canadian Health Measures Survey (CHMS) indicates that Canadian children 6- to 19-years of age spend 62 percent of their waking hours in sedentary pursuits. Of this 8.6 hours per day (on average), as much as 6 hours is spent on screen time, such as television, computer, and/or smart phones (Active Healthy Kids Canada, 2011).

The Canadian Paediatric Society (2008) strongly discourages any screen time for children younger than 2 years of age, and recommends limiting older children to 1 to 2 hours a day. Similarly, six major organizations in the United States (the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and the American Psychiatric Association) recommend no electronic media at all for children under age 2 and strict limitations after that.

Using the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development, Pagani and her colleagues (2010) investigated how early childhood television exposure influenced Grade 4 outcomes, including those for academic, psychosocial, and lifestyle pursuits. They found that every additional hour of television viewing beyond two hours per day at 29 months of age corresponded to a 7 percent decrease in classroom engagement and a 6 percent decrease in math achievement. It also was associated with a 10 percent greater likelihood of being victimized by classmates, a 13 percent decrease in engaging in physical activity on the weekends, a 9 percent decrease in activities needing physical effort, and an increase of 9 and 10 percent in the consumption of soft drinks and snacks, respectively.

Perhaps as a result of these last factors, each hour of viewing also correlated to a 5 percent increase in body mass index (Pagani et al., 2010). Such findings suggest that early television exposure can have serious long-term negative consequences for children.