10.2 Play

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; P. K. Smith, 2010). Whether play is essential for normal growth or is merely fun is “a controversial topic of study” (Pellegrini, 2011, p. 3).

There are echoes of this controversy in preschool education, as explained in Chapter 9. Some educators want children to focus on reading and math; others predict emotional and academic problems for children who rarely play (Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2009; Pellegrini, 2009; Rubin et al., 2009). It does seem to be true that children who are deprived of activity for a long period tend to play more vigorously when they finally have the chance (Pellegrini et al., 2013).

VISUALIZING DEVELOPMENT

Sex Differences and Similarities

Humans tend to exaggerate differences and forget how much we have in common. Despite the common phrase “opposite sex,” most of our biological characteristics except sex organs are the same. The studies presented below are complex, but the bottom line is the same as the top: Whenever sex differences appear, be cautious—remember, sex similarities are more apparent than differences, and every study shows overlap. The two sexes are never opposites. As you can see from the photo of six children, all close in age, for height age is much more important than gender.

DIFFERENCES IN PSYCHOPATHOLOGY

For children under age 10, boys have higher rates of psychopathology, although specific ratios vary by cohort and location. The most dramatic gender difference in rates of psychopathology is found with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, as shown on the right. Most children do not have ADHD, but almost three times as many boys as girls do.

PHOTO: GELPI JM/SHUTTERSTOCK
CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL, 2011

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Every study that details sex differences in children’s behavior reports a complex picture.

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Playmates

Young children play best with peers, that is, people of about the same age and social status. Although even infants are intrigued by other small children, most infant play is either solitary or with a parent. Some maturation is required for social play with peers.

At first, children are too self-absorbed to be good playmates, but they learn quickly over the years of early childhood. By age 6, most are quite skilled: They know how to join a peer group, manage conflict, take turns, find friends, and keep playmates. Over the childhood years, social play teaches emotional regulation, empathy, and cultural understanding (Göncü & Gaskins, 2011).

Parents have an obvious task in this regard: Find peers and arrange play dates. Of course, some parents play with their children, which benefits both of them. But even the most playful parent is outmatched by another child at negotiating the rules of tag, at play-fighting, at pretending to be sick, at killing dragons. Specifics vary, but “play with peers is one of the most important areas in which children develop positive social skills” (Xu, 2010, p. 496).

Culture and Cohort

All young children play; “everywhere, a child playing is a sign of healthy development” (Gosso, 2010, p. 95). Everywhere, play is the prime activity of even very young children, as illustrated in Figure 10.1. Basic play is similar in every culture, such as throwing and catching; pretending to be adults; drawing with chalk, markers, sticks, or what have you. Accordingly, developmentalists think play is experience-expectant.

Mostly Playing When researchers studied 3-year-olds in the United States, Brazil, and Kenya, they found that, on average, the children spent more than half their time playing. Note the low percentages of both middle- and working-class Brazilian children in the Lessons category, which included all intentional efforts to teach children something. There is a cultural explanation: Unlike parents in Kenya and the United States, most Brazilian parents believe that children of this age learn without instruction.

Some specifics are experience-dependent, however, reflecting culture and SES. [Lifespan Link: Experience-expectant and experience-dependent brain development is explained in Chapter 5.] Chinese children fly kites, Alaskan natives tell dreams and stories, Lapp children pretend to be reindeer, Cameroon children hunt mice, and so on. Parents in some cultures consider play important and willingly engage in games and dramas. In other places, sheer survival takes time and energy, and children must help by doing chores. In those places, if children have any time for play, it is with each other, not with adults (Kalliala, 2006; Roopnarine, 2011).

As children grow older, play becomes more social, influenced by brain maturation, playmate availability, and the physical setting. One developmentalist bemoans the twenty-first century’s “swift and pervasive rise of electronic media” and adults who lean “more toward control than freedom” (Chudacoff, 2011, p. 108). He praises children who find places to play independently and “conspire ways to elude adult management.”

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

SERGIO MORAES/REUTERS/LANDOV

This opinion may be extreme, but it is echoed in more common concerns. As you remember, one dispute in preschool education is the proper balance between unstructured, creative play and teacher-directed learning. Before the electronic age, and in places where technology was rare, most families had several children and few mothers worked outside the home. Then young children played outside with nearby children, often of several ages.

That was true in the United States a century ago. In 1932 the American sociologist Mildred Parten described the development of five kinds of social play, each more advanced than the previous one:

No Grabbing Maybe the child on the left or the right will soon try to grab. If sharing continues, is it because these children have been raised within Asian families.

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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.

Parten thought that progress in social play was age-related, with 1-year-olds usually playing alone and 6-year-olds usually cooperatively.

Research on contemporary children finds much more age variation. Many Asian parents successfully teach 3-year-olds to take turns, share, and otherwise cooperate. Many North American children, encouraged to be individuals, still engage in parallel play at this age. Given all the social, political, and economic changes over the past century, many forms of social play (not necessarily in Parten’s sequence) are normal for children at each age (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 favored 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; P. K. Smith, 2010) and may help regulate emotions (Sutton-Smith, 2011). Adults need to remember this when they want children to sit still and be quiet. Among nonhuman primates, deprivation of social play warps later life, rendering some monkeys unable to mate, to make friends, or even to survive alongside 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 it easy to be caught.

The most common form of active play is called rough-and-tumble play 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 male monkey wanted to play, he would simply catch the eye of a peer and then run a few feet away. This invitation to rough-and-tumble play was almost always accepted, with a play face (smiling, not angry). Puppies, kittens, and chimps behave similarly.

When the scientists returned to London, they saw that human youngsters, like baby monkeys, also enjoy rough-and-tumble play, signified by the play face. Children chase, wrestle, and grab each other, developing games like tag and cops-and-robbers, with 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 many other iterations). It is two or three times more as common among boys than girls and flourishes in ample space with minimal supervision (Berenbaum et al., 2008; Hassett et al., 2008, Pellegrini, 2013).

Many scientists think that rough-and-tumble play helps the prefrontal cortex develop, as children learn to regulate emotions, practice social skills, and strengthen their bodies (Pellis & Pellis, 2011). Indeed, some believe that play in childhood, especially rough-and-tumble play between father and son, may prevent antisocial behavior (even murder) later on (Wenner, 2009).

Another major type of active play is sociodramatic play, in which children act out various roles and plots. Through such acting, children:

Joy Supreme Pretend play in early childhood is thrilling and powerful. For this 7-year-old from Park Slope, Brooklyn, pretend play overwhelms mundane realities, such as an odd scarf or awkward arm.

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• Explore and rehearse social roles
• Learn to explain their ideas and persuade playmates
• Practice emotional regulation by pretending to be afraid, angry, brave, and so on
• Develop self-concept in a nonthreatening context

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

Note the social interaction in this form of play, with the 3-year-old clearly more mature than the 2-year-old. She created, 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”). It is noteworthy that the 2-year-old boy was willing to cooperate; when children are a few years older than these two, sex segregation is almost universal (Leaper, 2013).

A slightly older girl might want to play with the boys, but the older boys usually do not allow her (Pellegrini, 2013). Boy-versus-girl play emerges later, at puberty, but toward the end of early childhood both sexes stick to their own unless a particular neighborhood group has no other girls or no other boys.

Older preschoolers are not only more gender conscious, their sociodramatic play is much more elaborate. This was evident in four boys, about age 5, in a day-care center 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.

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 soldiers, rebels, heroes, or spies. From their perspective, there is only one problem with such play—no one wants to be the enemy.

© MIKE GOLDWATER/ALAMY

Good versus evil is a favorite theme of boys’ sociodramatic play, with danger part of the plot but victory in the end. By contrast, girls often act out domestic scenes, with themselves as the adults. In the same day-care center where Joni piled mattresses on his playmates, the girls say their play is “more beautiful and peaceful … [but] boys play all kinds of violent games” (Kalliala, 2006, p. 110).

The prevalence of sociodramatic play varies by family. Some cultures find it frivolous and discourage it; in other cultures, parents teach toddlers to be lions, or robots, or ladies drinking tea. Then children elaborate on those themes (Kavanaugh, 2011). Some children are avid television watchers, and they then act out superhero themes.

Television arouses concern among many developmentalists, who prefer that children’s dramas come from their own imagination, not from the media. Of course, some children learn from television and educational videos, especially if adults watch with them and reinforce the lessons. However, children on their own rarely select educational programs over fast-paced cartoons, in which characters hit, shoot, and kick.

Six major organizations (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. The problem is not only that violent media teach aggression but also that all media take time from constructive interaction and creative play (see Figure 10.2).

Learning by Playing Fifty years ago, the average child spent three hours a day in outdoor play. Video games and television have largely replaced that play time, especially in cities. Children seem safer if parents can keep an eye on them, but what are the long-term effects on brain and body?

BARBARA SMALLER/THE NEW YORKER/CARTOONBANK.COM