The Importance of Play

THE IMPORTANCE OF PLAY
I've been working with kids since I was a kid. When I was about eight years old I remember my dad telling me that younger kids seemed to "gravitate" towards me. He also said I had good "people skills" but I didn't know what he meant.

When I was growing up, there was nothing I loved more than playing with my friends. I grew up in the middle of a tree lined street, in a middle class neighborhood, filled with childhood friends and fond memories of playing with my friends every day. It was a gentler, calmer, more innocent time in our society when I was growing up. "Stay-home-mom's" were generally the rule and not the exception. All of my friends back then knew which moms' made the best sandwiches or cookies and which moms' were the strictest or the "most fun" to be around. We thought someone's dad was cool if he didn't yell at you when you broke one of his windows
with a baseball.

I still remember how exciting it was when a bunch of us would ride our bikes through the alleys on the way to the nearby school. We would ride our bikes together in a pack with baseball cards attached to the spokes of our tires because it made a cool sound. Once we arrived at the school we would play anything and everything - baseball, football, kickball, shoot marbles, make up obstacle courses, play capture the flag, climb on top of the school roof, or maybe just catch frogs and polliwogs. Eventually, when the sun was about to go down, someone's mom or dad would come over to the school and take everyone home. I grew up thinking that playing was something every kid was required to do daily, much like eating and sleeping. It never occurred to me that some kids didn't like to play or weren't "good" at playing, or just didn't know how to play.

I knew very early on that I loved "playing" with my friends. Whether it was sports, riding bikes, catching frogs, talking on walkie-talkies, playing hide and seek, camping, hiking, going to carnivals, eating french-fries, or drinking A&W root beers in a chilled mug, growing up was fun and I loved sharing it with my friends. Back in those days when a grown-up asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up, I responded that I'd like to play all day with my friends and get paid for it! I guess things more or less worked out that way!

For nearly forty years I've used my play skills to teach children with special needs the joy of developing their own play skills. Even after all these years, I still feel the same excitement and satisfaction from helping a child discover how much fun play can be. Once that self-discovery occurs, it's only a matter of time before the child's confidence and self-esteem begins to grow. A child's success is my greatest reward.

I've always enjoyed the child who presented a challenge. When someone says a child can't do something I look for ways to prove them wrong and take delight when they do so. When someone says a child will never be able to walk and ten years later that child is skateboarding, roller-skating, and riding a bike around the park, I am proud of their accomplishments. When someone says a child should be institutionalized as an infant and then becomes mainstreamed in the second grade, it gives me hope.