“They say children nowadays doh know how to behave? Well, I go prove dem wrong, stop that!” she said. “But is the parents…” I started, and stopped, as she agreed vigorously.
A smart, competent, common-sense mother. Good cook too! Her six-year-old stopped kicking the ball in the office and moved to her side.
Well, all he was trying to do was play and I had encouraged him, passing the ball to him in between weighing and examining his gorgeous breastfed baby brother.
Why?
Because play is one of the five critical things you can do to bring up children well. Breastfeed. Immunise. Read. Discipline. Play.
The least considered of these is play.
Check out the definition of play in the COED.
“Engage in games or other activities for enjoyment rather than for a serious or practical purpose.” Bad, bad definition!
Gives you the idea that play is something that is insignificant. However mysterious and stupid play may seem to the adult, it is power for children.
Play is given little priority in T&T. Playgrounds and squares are being closed or taken over by drug addicts. Property developers and the politicians build expensive little boxes with as much little green space as possible.
And schools are starting to reduce time devoted to breaks so they can cram more useless information into little minds and produce more non-thinking citizens to vote more race.
Some schools actually do not want children running around because either teachers are “too tired” to oversee recess or afraid that they will be blamed when the poor children fall and scrape their itty bitty knees.
There’s a wonderful quote from an article on a Ted Talk on kindergartens (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=10&v=J5jwEyDaR-0) by a Japanese architect, Takaharu Tezuka, “children are supposed to be outside, so that is how we should treat them,” and “kids need small doses of danger…in this kind of situation they learn to help each other!”
Of course! Small doses of danger help them to become resistant to larger doses of danger, it’s another form of immunisation, of protection.
Small falls help to develop coordination and prevent larger falls. Unfortunately, as a good friend remarked on Saturday when one says play, too many parents think Toys ‘R’ Us. At least that’s gone now.
Or they think about those atrocious “educational games” advertised on the booby tube guaranteed to take your money and leave your children bored.
Or they believe that “play” means a scripted, organised, adult controlled series of activities. That is not play. Play is free. Play is unsupervised.
Play allows children to be themselves, to use their imaginations, to be inventive, to learn how to cooperate, to develop muscles and coordination and immunity from illnesses.
Above all, it gives children space to be themselves among their peers without being pulled and prodded and measured by adults with our hang-ups and biases and strange beliefs in spirits in the sky and green smoothies for weight loss.
When grown-ups interfere with play, they turn children into walking problems: out of control, aggressive, bullies or targets of bullies.
Despite all those crazy organised activities, they are fatter and lazier, still spending too much time indoors sitting in front of a screen massacring each other in computer games.
But what do you expect them to do with all their energy? Study for their never-ending exams like the 2019 SEA takers have done this August?
The problem of children not being allowed or encouraged to play is so serious that one country has actually legalised the child’s right to play. In 2010, Wales legislated that every Welsh local authority “must secure sufficient play opportunities in its area for children.”
Two weeks ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics did something similar. The academy officially recommended that doctors begin writing prescriptions for play.
Imagine, I may soon have to prescribe play for children. In a tiny tropical island in the Caribbean! What a screwed up world you all have made for children.
