Protecting Play: It’s a Matter of Life and Death

ABSTRACT

Play is a critical activity, as important to healthy life as sleep, water, and nutrition. Research shows that play promotes cognitive and socioemotional development, and that learning, problem-solving, self-regulation and pro-social skills all stem from playing. Yet play is valued less and less in our culture, with children as young as preschool age being placed in organized activities based on an understanding of enrichment that’s limited to academic achievement and performance. As families and as a society we are failing to provide a “good-enough facilitating environment” for our children to grow, to live, as we take time and space to play away from children and adolescents. Why are we doing this? I speculate that we are a culture who is preoccupied with guaranteeing safety and success because of our anxiety and denial of four fundamental and interrelated experiences: failure, loss, aggression, and death. With the use of clinical material, I illustrate how, in our attempt to guarantee safety and success, we have become unable to safely risk engaging (i.e., play) with, and fully experience, these vulnerabilities, and are in fact creating an unsafe psychic environment for our children, and how play can help us redress this emotional impoverishment.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. To ensure confidentiality, all names and other identifiable information have been altered. Some vignettes are based on a composite of several patients. For clinical material that might be recognizable to the parents and patients as their own, the author has received written consent from the parents.

2. This paper illustrates a specific manifestation of what I’m referring to as a deficient facilitating environment, and therefore, the generalizability of some of the ideas in this paper is limited to people from non-marginalized backgrounds. That being said, it is my belief that the impact of fear-based rhetoric that comes from politicians, policy makers, administrators, and the media has seeped into the consciousness of many marginalized families as well, and that these children are at the same or greater risk when funding and time for play, recess, gym, the arts, etc. is cut out of their school days.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jill A. Leibowitz

Jill A. Leibowitz, PsyD, is a clinical psychologist who works with babies, children, adolescents and adults in her New York City private practice. She is a graduate of the Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Program at the William Alanson White Institute, where she teaches and supervises graduate students. She is a graduate of the Anni Bergman Parent-Infant Training Program, and participates in the Anni Bergman Parent-Infant Outreach Program. She is on the faculty at the Harlem Family Institute, and has taught and supervised students at several New York City graduate programs. She is passionate about play and emotional literacy, and has authored a soon to be published children’s book that is focused on helping children and caregivers communicate about big feelings.