The Power of Play
Nurturing Connection, Curiosity, and Learning
by Rick Alston, LCSW
“These mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb.”
— Najwa Zebian
One overlooked and perhaps misunderstood aspect of social work at Parkside concerns the experience of pleasure that derives from our relationships with children. Pleasure stems from feeling attached and connected to another person. There is pleasure in meeting the child’s needs and in watching a child flourish. There is pleasure in truly “seeing” another in a way that deepens connection. By “seeing,” we mean the capacity to reflect on a child’s safety, regulation, and openness to relationships. Children feel “seen” when they know we pay attention to their feelings, try to understand their actions, and promise to support them through thick and thin. Sally Provence, a founding figure at The Yale Child Study Center and The Zero to Three Foundation, advised young parents: “Don’t just do something. Stand there and pay attention. Your child is trying to tell you something.” As social workers, we take a stance of curiosity with a child either implicitly or explicitly: “Who are you, what happened, what do you feel, what do you need, and how can I help?” We apply these same questions to ourselves: “Who am I, what happened to me, what do I feel, and what do I need?” We value the emphasis on meaning being created and shared in the relationship such that reality is transformed in a way that one feels alive, vital, and able to love and to be loved.
Play is a social worker’s primary means of connecting with a child. Play creates multiple opportunities to experience trust and pleasure, to explore fears and fantasies, and to make meaning in the presence of an interested clinician. Play involves the exercise of imagination and the use of symbols to communicate wishes and feelings. We see play as “space” where a child and her therapist, dyad, or group can safely discover and try out different ways of being and relating.
Play is another aspect of social, emotional, and cultural development that is often misunderstood or overlooked. Because play is frequently fun yet “aimless,” one might conclude that play lacks educative value, or even more seriously, detracts from the important pursuit of education. Indeed, play ranges from frivolous to deadly serious. Animals play for pleasure but also to perfect hunting skills essential for survival. Human play, especially in the presence of a connected and thoughtful caregiver, supercharges neural pathways intrinsic to emotional regulation. Studies demonstrate that pleasure experienced in relationships as well as pleasure from memories can mitigate the impact of stress and even dull deep psychic pain. Pleasurable relationships “buffer” stress from ACEs (adverse childhood experiences), trauma, and other environmental stressors by decreasing cortisol levels (a stress hormone made in the adrenal cortex). We know that a secure and regulated child naturally seeks out learning opportunities, retains information, and is more willing to take risks and face challenges with optimism.
As social workers at Parkside, we look for every opportunity to help teachers, therapists, and parents engage children with pleasure: to laugh and play, to name their hopes for their children. As you can imagine, this kind of reflective work is frequently emotionally taxing as we continuously monitor our children and ourselves for signs of distress, dysregulation, and threat that derail relationships and learning. Kids and adults learn best in optimal levels of anxiety or stress. Too little and they get bored. Too much stress leads the body and brain to trigger its protective “alarm” states: freeze, fight, flight, and succumb. Most of a child’s energy becomes devoted to staying safe with little left for higher order thinking and reflection.
Keeping in mind that play, pleasure, and curiosity cultivated in the presence of a safe and regulated adult promote higher-order thinking and learning, we suggest that parents spend at least 10 minutes a day playing with their children. No cell phone or devices that might distract. Follow your child’s lead in play, read a book, have a cuddle or rough and tumble time. Trust that a child’s most important interests and concerns will emerge through their actions, emotions, content, and themes. A parent’s openness, acceptance, and curiosity will more than win over the hearts of their children. Most children will look forward to the special time especially if it becomes a regular part of a busy routine. Playtime with a caregiver can be like an oasis in the desert or a rest stop on a busy highway. Parents can further benefit from paying attention to their child’s body language, words, actions, and their own. Keep a log for a week attending to what feels easy, hard, or confusing. At the end of the week, reflect on what feels new, different, exciting, or concerning. Talk with friends, loved ones, your child’s teachers, and therapists about your experiences and dive in again! Feeling safer and more connected to you, your children will draw strength and excitement from your relationship, which will naturally encourage them to broaden their learning and interests.
As we adjust to living with Covid as an endemic and grapple with political upheaval and global conflict, now more than ever, children need time to play. Play offers real-time opportunities to make sense of how intense external events impact them internally and are transformed and expressed symbolically and verbally. As adults, we need to play as well! We can look to art, culture, and religion for further direction and inspiration. These creative mediums (much like play) capture and contain the tension between the sometimes-brutal facts of reality, while also holding tightly to living life fully, with joy, humor, and purpose.
“If you are distressed by everything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it, and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
— Marcus Aurelius