A few years ago I caused myself an embarrassing moment when I yelled at my kids
“would you guys just GROW UP - you’re acting like a bunch of children!”.
The comment, said in desperation, caused a further eruption of laughter from the little-ish one and smirks and chuckles from the big-ish kids.
Play is hugely important to children. A study out last spring by Metafuria and colleagues (2020) found continued evidence that parents' belief and support of play in preschool aged children is associated with greater play in the home and better children’s performance on neurological tests of executive functioning. When children engage in frequent pretend play for instance they have better inhibitory control. This study adds to a huge body of research stemming back to the 1972 theories of Piaget on the importance of play for development.
But what about the parents playing? What role should we play in it. A team from Stanford led by Jelena Obradovic’ reported findings recently that suggest parents actually need to back off when it comes to play. They looked at playtime behaviors of kindergarten aged children and found that parents who were more directive, provided more verbal feedback, questions suggestions, or instruction, had children who exhibited greater difficulty with self-regulation of behavior and emotions, and performed worse on executive functioning tasks.
In a second study, the researchers found that with older children, the association between parental over involvement and children’s lower executive functioning is present when the child is highly focused on a task, rather than simply passively engaged.
Their work suggests that when it comes to play, we parents need to just let our kids play. If your child is focused on something, be it LEGOs or their geometry homework, let them work it out but be available to support if and when they ask for help. If they are passively engaged in something or doing other work like maybe a jigsaw puzzle that involves a different type of cognitive work, your involvement or engagement is not likely to be detrimental and can even be supportive.
Does this mean you are completely off the hook for playtime? Nope.
Parent-child play time is essential to the building of Social Skill Sets. In particular, parent-child pretend play as well as physical play, is associated with skill sets related to gross motor, leadership, cognition, emotional regulation and even stress regulation. The important thing is to let the child lead when you are engaged in play together, and to help them develop independent play as well. In this previous blog post I discuss how to best play with your child based on Vygotsky’s principles of guided participation, scaffolding, and intersubjectivity.
For more on how to adopt a more playful attitude in life in generally you should read this.
Now go have some fun!
