Simplicity Parenting (15 page)

Make-believe is open-ended play at its most flexible and creative. Anything at all can be used in the service of an idea or fantasy. And it is just this kind of flexible thinking—the pot that becomes a hat one minute, a steering wheel the next—that will serve a child their entire life. Children draw meaning from the world through this play; a lack of
it leaves creativity and identity weak. The choices made in fantasy play build a foundation of individuality and guard against a child becoming a passive receptor for concepts and ideas that have been prepackaged for them.

Once again, the more elaborate the “prop” for pretend play, the less a child flexes their own “imaginary muscles.” A fully detailed princess bed, complete with turrets, drapes, and a drawbridge, can provide a huge initial liftoff for castle fantasies. But with so little left in court to imagine, and so few fantastical choices to make, a child may just hang up her princess robes. She may wander out of the bedroom kingdom in search of a little more space and new people to become. Dress-up clothes, hats, and accessories are wonderful play tools that I think deserve a place in every child’s mix of keepers. Here again simple choices, rather than elaborate or character-specific outfits, will provide the most varied and sustained possibilities for pretend play. Items can be recycled in and out of your little collection with an occasional trip to a charity resale store, such as Goodwill.

Experience
. Children need experience, not entertainment, in play, The more kids can do, see, feel, and experience for themselves in play, the more connected they will feel to the world, and the less overwhelmed. We live in an information age, where kindergarten-age children know all about the tropical rainforest. Yet have they thoroughly mucked about in their own yards and neighborhoods? Have they grown their own plants, taken mud baths, climbed trees, dug for worms, or seen a robin’s nest close up?

Imagine a day spent playing with the four elements. Campfires may be rare treats, and the warmth of a wool sweater may have to stand in for the heat of fire on most days. But there is elemental bliss associated with the combinations of dirt and water; muddy, marshy mucking; sand poured and molded and pushed; windy days; breaking up ice with sticks; sliding or trudging through snow; standing on the shoreline border of earth and water. Excellent toys for all of this “primal” exploration are buckets, nets, shovels and kites, scoops, bubbles, baskets, and containers for pouring and collecting.

Purpose and industry
. My friend Anna told me the story of her son Jacob’s “Christmas breakfasts.” When Jacob was five he became fascinated with mixing up concoctions in the kitchen. Anna would let him use some vinegar, a few rarely used spices from the cupboard, whatever
she could spare. Jacob loved his “work,” pondering each addition with great concentration and focus. His name for each of these often malodorous brews: “Christmas breakfast.” Anna would sometimes find an unexpected (and unsupervised) “Christmas breakfast” in the oven, or in a cupboard. She’s convinced Jacob has a future—probably not as a chef, but as a chemist.

Children love to be busy, and useful. They delight in seeing that there is a place for them in the hum of doing, making, and fixing that surrounds them. I throw my torn jeans or holey socks into a basket and purposefully sit down one evening to mend them. Needles are threaded, doll clothes added to the heap, and together my daughters and I get to work.

Honor your child’s efforts with real tools for their work, their own apron hung where they can get to it whenever the need or desire strikes. A pocket organizer hung on the back of a door might include space for a child’s small broom and dustpan, a dust cloth, and other “tidying up,” pet feeding, cooking, or laundry tools.

So often a child’s play models adult “work”: being a storekeeper, a truck driver, a teacher. Especially as children reach school age, they need opportunities to be industrious, to build a sense of autonomy and mastery. A wonderful counterbalance to “entertaining” children is to involve them in a task, in the “work” of family life. Home is the environment a child will know best, and they need to affect their environment through their own efforts. As small beings they can feel like inferior, passive observers of all that happens around them. A sense of industry—of busyness and purpose—counteracts feelings of overwhelm. And isn’t it easy to feel small and inconsequential in a world so awash in information, so threatened with issues such as global warming? Children who grow up as little doers, making Christmas breakfast and participating in the chores of daily life, will already have an inner gesture, a posture toward competency, activity, and autonomy.

Nature
. Nature is the perfect antidote to the sometimes poisonous pressures of modern life. In his book
Last Child in the Woods
, Richard Louv makes an eloquent and compelling case for the importance of nature in children’s lives. “Modern life narrows our focus until it is primarily visual, appropriate to about the dimension of a computer monitor or television screen. By contrast nature accentuates all of the senses.”
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Louv offers scientific evidence for what most of us know intuitively: that time in nature is restorative, that it helps us recover from the
stresses of daily life and improves our capacity to pay attention. In its complexity and sensuality, nature invites exploration, direct contact, and experience. But it also inspires a sense of awe, a glimpse of what is still “un-Googleable” … life’s mystery and magnitude.

For those who live outside a city, the yard is often the first “frontier” of nature. Whether in parks, yards, empty lots, nature preserves, scraggly wild patches, or well-preserved wilderness areas, nature is an ideal environment for play, And a childhood full of opportunities and time for exploring nature is a rich childhood indeed. We don’t have to aim for spectacular natural settings. How satisfying it is for a child to know a place—however modest—and to know it deeply. To explore it repeatedly, to know it in all of its seasonal faces, to identify one’s own favorite little spots and crevices in it. It’s also wonderful to have a variety of natural places and spots to explore. Children feel more grounded to where they live when they can learn to identify some of the common plants, birds, and animals they see in their yards and neighborhoods.

Children have a deep need for their own special places, humble or grand. The almighty cardboard box speaks to this need, as does a fort made from a table and blankets, or a more free-form version made from rope, cloths, and clothespins. A “summer bed” with a camp lantern on the porch on summer nights, a storage loft swept clean and transformed into a new play landscape. The outdoors offers wonderful possibilities for special places. A tree house, or even a climbing tree with a branch wide enough for a perch. My friend’s daughter, Amy, used to read and play in a mossy spot next to an old lilac bush on the side of their yard. It was her special spot, a place to be alone. A place to play or read, or just to sit. One day Amy was amazed to find a perfect little snakeskin at her special spot. She took it as a gift and a wink; it was confirmation that other creatures, at least, had noticed her there.

Social interaction
. On a recent visit to a child-care facility I saw a group of children sitting on the floor in a semicircle around a television. The man on the screen was leaping about, singing a song that was designed to get the kids up, kicking and clapping along with him. The poor guy was giving it his all—you had to give him an A for animation and effort. But the children were just sitting, motionless, watching. There is no vitality to a screen. Children need interaction with others, with human beings, to build social skills and their own individuality. There is no substitute, no “virtual” alternative to the vital, identity-forging
power of relationships. Social skills can’t be stimulated by technology. In a world that increasingly relies on various forms of technology, none of which involve human touch, we find ourselves even further removed from one another.

Here’s another snapshot. A client of mine told me the story of her son Phillip’s recent sixteenth birthday. “We gave him the option of a party, ‘Great,’ he said, ‘I’ll just have some of the guys over.’ About six of his classmates showed up around nine in the evening, each of them carrying a laptop, speakers or some other equipment. They all went down into the basement, and when I went down later, they were spread out around the room, each thoroughly involved in some sort of virtual play. It was interesting; they seemed to like being together in the room, but all eyes and comments were directed straight ahead, at the various machines.”

We’ll talk more about screens and technology in Chapter Six. Screens and gadgets are here to stay, and will be part of most children’s lives as they reach Phillip’s age. However, this also continues to be true, as it has been since the advent of our species: The primary predictor of success and happiness in life is our ability to get along with others. Screens won’t help. Family, where membership is automatic, and hopefully lifelong, is the first laboratory of identity and social interactions. Parents who talk, play, cuddle, and engage their babies, often and with pleasure, build a foundation of feelings that will prepare those small beings for widening circles of socialization, as toddlers and beyond. In relation to others a child learns how to act, and learns who they are. Much of a child’s socialization—years of practicing, pretending, role-playing, learning, and refining codes of conduct—takes place through play.

Like magnetic fields, babies attract people to them. Facial gestures, eye contact, nuzzling, clapping, and rhyming games begin the lifelong interplay with others. From about the age of two, a toddler can form a bond with a special doll. It is a defining relationship, a magical window of identity, wherein so much is processed, felt, and learned. Again, the simpler the doll, the more a child can project onto it and draw from it. Cloth dolls with simple features, often handmade, tend to be more expensive than plastic dolls. However, considering what they can do and be for a child’s developing sense of self, they may be worth the investment. Tea sets, wooden animals, trucks and blocks, the loose democracy of the sandbox, the swing set, foursquare and hopscotch, jacks, pick-up sticks, puppets and puzzles, games of hide-and-seek and catch, cards
and board games, checkers and chess. What joy to discover, again and again in life, how unpredictable and expansive pleasure becomes when shared with others.

It is an interesting window to a child’s development to see how close they want to be to the family while playing. Infants thrive on closeness; they’re most soothed and happy in some form of warm embrace. Toddlers want to play—even if they’re playing alone—where they can see and be near others. You’ve noticed their preference for right under your feet. Sometimes rooms in the house need to be shifted for the early childhood years, so that a play space is made near the kitchen, or heart of the house. From preschool through the first couple of years of primary school, children still want to be close. Kids six to nine will crave more privacy in their play, but they will still “return to base camp” to check in and see what is happening, flying in and out like a flock of noisy seagulls. From the age of nine or ten, kids will really want their own space, preferably with a desk or table at which they can do projects, hobbies, and crafts. As a child reaches the preteen years, their play reflects the fact that their sense of identity is “under construction,” a process that requires more alone time. While teenagers still want you to be available emotionally, they have a developmental job (separating from you) that makes physical proximity more difficult. They will still need it, but increasingly on their own terms.

Movement
. Children need to move. They need to run, skip, jump, climb, hop, and twirl; they need to wrestle, to roll about, to throw and catch balls, to feel their bodies move in space. Science has conclusively proven that rough-and-tumble play helps shape the brain, pruning excess cells, branchings, and connections in the prefrontal cortex.
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Yet scientists are still conflicted about the main developmental purpose of play. Is it imperative for neural growth and shaping? Does active play help a child “practice” the movements they’ll need for survival as adults? Does it help develop social and behavioral flexibility?

While the scientists ponder, children will continue their impromptu games of tag. Through movement they’ll build balance and coordination—undeniably; they’ll also develop vitality and a lifelong predisposition for activity. The Kaiser Foundation estimates that American children age six and under who use screen media spend an average of almost two hours in front of screens every day.
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Movement counters the passivity of our devotion to technology. A childhood rich in physical play, in time and space to move, builds more than physical strength. It expands
your child’s lifelong access to fun, health, and connection with others. That’s reason enough to move. These and other toys inspire active play: bikes and balls, skates, swings and scooters, climbing ropes and jump ropes; play structures or gates to climb over, tunnels to climb through, balance beams, Hula Hoops and basketball hoops, blocks, trucks, and construction toys, sleds, snowshoes, marble runs, hopscotch, and foursquare.

Art and music
. The image that comes to mind when I think about children and art is not a refrigerator covered with drawings. It is an earlier image: a one-year-old’s pudgy legs half hidden in a mudhole, the hose nearby still dribbling water. Registering on his face is delight … delight at the mud’s cool sludginess in his toes, but also a delightful growing awareness of what he can
do
with that black glop. Children need to create. They need to make art, to feel and see and move their worlds in new directions.

From clay pinch pots to cutouts, the wet pushing and slapping of a ball of wool being felted, to the exuberant wash of color on a page, art invites the senses and movement; it opens up imaginary worlds, relaxes and channels attention in concert with fascination, and makes for playful purpose and industry. With or without tools, art is primal, nourishing play.