Why do we stop playing?
As a general rule, children play far more than adults. Many adults don’t play at all. Or maybe they do, but just in different ways. Maybe we could class going down the pub with some friends as playing. Or perhaps we could say that having a barbecue in the back garden and inviting the neighbours round is a type of play.
It’s possible, and it’s one way of looking at things. But, for the moment, let’s keep focussed on our more familiar understanding of play. Children running round chasing each other. A child sat in their bedroom having a tea party with their teddies. A group of children taking it in turns to climb a tree.
Why don’t adults climb trees? An adult and a child might walk past the same tree and view it completely differently. The child might think ‘Great, I’ll climb that,’ and the adult might think ‘That’s a nice oak tree.’
One of the reasons adults don’t climb trees is because it’s frowned upon. Society has rules and expectations. A clear rule all of us know is that children behave differently from adults. The consequence of this is that adults should expect themselves to behave in a more adult way. Which means less play and more adultness.
There’s nothing wrong with this, of course. And there’s much that’s right about it. But it does serve to demonstrate the gradual change in behaviour most people go through as they grow up. One in which play comes to play a less important role in their lives.
By thinking about some of the reasons for this, we can better understand some of the benefits that play brings to children.
First, adults know a lot about the world. They know what happens when you climb a tree. They have less of a need to discover the world because they’ve done a great deal of discovering already. Both when they were young and when they were older as well.
Second, through their development, adults have come to understand the boundaries of the world in which they live, including the norms, expectations and rules that underpin a lot of what goes on around them. They don’t need to find out what these are. And they don’t need to practice following and transgressing them.
Third, adults tend to perceive themselves as adults, and this perception brings with it certain attitudes to play. You even see this happening with young children. Consider when a five year-old says: ‘I’m not a baby anymore.’ Or, when a thirteen year-old says: ‘Stop treating me like I’m still twelve.’
As we age, we define ourselves, in part, by what we are not. A thirteen year-old is no long a twelve year-old. An adult is no longer a child. As part of this self-definition, we put aside those things we associate with the age that is now behind us. And play is one of those things we associate with childhood.
Fourth, play can be boring for adults. This is because much of children’s play relates to things adults already know and can do. This is reflected in the fact that many parents reach a point at which they need a break from playing ‘put the shoe in the box’ or playing football in the back garden. And the threshold for becoming bored is usually much lower for the parent than it is for the child, this being a consequence of the different prior experience they bring to play and, as a result, the different things they get out of it.
Fifth, adults have more to think about, more responsibilities and more structure to their lives (both in terms of day-to-day activity and the thinking they do). This can make it a little harder to embrace the creative and imaginative aspects of play. To put it another way, adult life often wears down our ability to free ourselves of the reality of our lives and to then jump into the arena of play. This point is used well by holiday companies, who often base their adverts on parents rekindling their sense of play (and fun) when they slip out of the daily grind and find themselves on holiday, free from all the things that weigh on their shoulders, day after day.
So there we have five key reasons why adults tend to play less than children. But in those reasons we can also see why playing is of such benefit to children – to your child. And why it helps all children to learn, grow and develop. Play allows children to learn about the world, to explore the world, to explore language, to interact with others, to test and push boundaries, to be creative, to open up their minds and to step out of reality into the free, unbounded world of their imagination.
All these benefits remain open to us as adults as well. We sometimes just have to work a little harder to access them.
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