My three year old likes to use stones to stand-in for people in different scenarios. His playing this way is taken very seriously by him.
A recent article in the Christian Science Monitor mentioned that the concept of "unstructured, self-initiated play" is vanishing from our culture. [http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0718/p13s02-lign.html].
A professor of child development states: "Many young people today don't know how to play. Their time has been so programmed, so structured that they have had little time or opportunity to engage in self-initiated activities."
He suggests that lack of play hurts one's success in higher-level math and science, as these ultimately require fantasy, curiousity and imagination.
Also, that when adults play with children, it allows children to see parents in a new way other then as power figures. "...when you are playing, you and the child are more equal," "This makes it easier to communicate," and both parent and child learn about each other.
And, while they may not verbalize it, children see parents giving up something to be with them. They see this as evidence that they are important and that the parent cares deeply about them.
The professor,sums up what parents can do in one word: Share. "Share your passions, share your experience, share your humor, share your decisionmaking and, most of all, share, your time," he says.
A brief list of play ideas:
All ages: Have daily chores; help someone else; read; play sports; joke; share stories about when you were a child; take walks or bike rides.
Preschoolers: Go to the playground.
Kindergarten to age 7: Make an art corner with paper, glue, ribbons, sparkles, fabric, boxes, string, and clay; make a fort; sleep out in a tent; play board games; play ball games, like catch; tell riddles and knock-knock jokes; cook and bake.
Ages 8 to 10: At this age, children are very much into playing with peers. Provide opportunities and materials (games, etc.) for such play, but don't intrude.
Ages 10 to 12: Again, preteens are very much into their friends, but they are happy to play catch or more sophisticated card games like poker or hearts with parents. Don't feel hurt if children prefer to play with friends.
Ages 13 and up: Now young people feel comfortable doing grown-up activities with parents: softball, golf, bowling, skiing, sailing, or hiking.
2 comments:
To Recap this and the last entry:
I have an interest in the nature of childhood.
Particularly in the following areas:
Childhood Memories -- how this experience impacts adult behaviour and whether this is enriching, and ultimately something that should be reclaimed or let go;
Childhood Dreams -- does childhood have a view to the future or does it only live in the moment?;
Childhood Time -- does childhood only live in the moment, with experience taking on transcendent aspects? Versus adult time treated as a finite resource?
Childhood Play (and its changing nature). Is childhood play important. Is there a problem if it is increasingly being programmed versus being spontaneous?
These are issues that I will have to do more work on and return to.
I found Neil Postman's book, The Disappearance of Childhood very useful. Wikipedia also has some other resources it recommends too:
Ariès, Philippe. Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962.
Boas, George. The Cult of Childhood. London: Warburg, 1966.
Brown, Marilyn R., ed. Picturing Children: Constructions of Childhood between Rousseau and Freud. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002.
Buckingham, David. After the Death of Childhood: Growing Up in the Age of Electronic Media. Blackwell Publishers, 2000. ISBN 0745619339.
Bunge, Marcia J., ed. The Child in Christian Thought. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2001.
Calvert, Karin. Children in the House: The Material Culture of Early Childhood, 1600-1900. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992.
Cleverley, John and D.C. Phillips. Visions of Childhood: Influential Models from Locke to Spock. New York: Teachers College, 1986.
Cannella, Gaile and Joe L. Kincheloe. "Kidworld: Childhood Studies, Global Perspectives, and Education". New York: Peter Lang, 2002.
Cunningham, Hugh. Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500. London: Longman, 1995.
Cunnington, Phillis and Anne Buck. Children’s Costume in England: 1300to 1900. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1965.
deMause, Lloyde, ed. The History of Childhood. London: Souvenir Press, 1976.
Higonnet, Anne. Pictures of Innocence: The History and Crisis of Ideal Childhood. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 1998.
Immel, Andrea and Michael Witmore, eds. Childhood and Children’s Books in Early Modern Europe, 1550-1800. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Kincaid, James R. Child-Loving: The Erotic Child and Victorian Culture. New York: Routledge, 1992
Knörr, Jacqueline, ed. Childhood and Migration. From Experience to Agency. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2005
Müller, Anja, ed. Fashioning Childhood in the Eighteenth Century: Age and Identity. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006.
O’Malley, Andrew. The Making of the Modern Child: Children’s Literature and Childhood in the Late Eighteenth Century. London: Routledge, 2003.
Pinchbeck, Ivy and Margaret Hewitt. Children in English Society. 2 vols. London: Routledge, 1969.
Pollock, Linda A. Forgotten Children: Parent-child relations from 1500 to 1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Postman, Neil. The Disappearance of Childhood. New York: Vintage, 1994.
Schultz, James. The Knowledge of Childhood in the German Middle Ages.
Shorter, Edward. The Making of the Modern Family.
Sommerville, C. John. The Discovery of Childhood in Puritan England. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992.
Steinberg, Shirley R. and Joe L. Kincheloe. Kinderculture: The Corporate Construction of Childhood. Westview Press Inc., 2004. ISBN 081339157.
Stone, Lawrence. The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800. New York: Harper and Row, 1979.
Zornado, Joseph L. Inventing the Child: Culture, Ideology, and the Story of Childhood. New York: Garland, 2001.
Wikipedia's link is at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood
This comment is meant to only offer a recap of what interests me. Others may describe additional areas worthy of consideration (thnks for this). I'll revisit all of this when I have new information to report.
You've got too much time to read. You have to get out more!
Marcos
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