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Top 32 Reasons to Add Play to Your Day
Sometimes when life gets busy we forget to play. Playing can invoke
feelings of guilt that are associated with not being productive. For some,
taking time to play and doing something they enjoy can make them feel
childish and lazy. What many do not know however is how truly important
it is to balance their day with play. Play is essential health and wellbeing.
It is involved in the development of the brain, strengthening relationships,
and keeping our mental health in check. Play is a fundamental life
process we cannot do without. It brings joy to day to day living on many
levels. Current research shows us that the drive for play and sleep
are found in the same area of the brain. This suggests that play is
as crucial to our functioning as sleep throughout our lifespan.
Stuart Brown, in his popular book Play: How it shapes the brain,
opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul, notes that
the opposite of play is not work but depression. Read on
to find a list of reasons why play is essential across the
lifespan.
For Children:
1. Play leads development.
It helps children meet and exceed
developmental milestones, giving them the opportunity to reach their full
potential.
2. Play has an important role in learning and memory. It enhances the retention of
knowledge.
3. Play triggers the release of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) which is
essential for the growth of new brain cells, strengthening neural networks, and
maintaining current ones. It plays a prominent role in how the brain develops.
4. Play helps to cultivate the areas of the brain responsible for attention, language
skills, discriminating what information is relevant and what is not, monitoring and
organizing thoughts and feelings, and planning for the future. Without the
opportunity to play children are found to be handicapped in these skills and
these deficits can last throughout the lifespan.
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5. Frequent breaks for play at home and at school increase children’s attention
span.
6. Play provides children a way to process and cope with life’s challenges.
7. Play develops and improves social skills.
8. Play, when it includes family or friends, increases a child’s sense of belonging.
9. Play helps children develop the ability to understand other’s points of view and
through this they develop empathy.
10. Play teaches children about boundaries, cooperation, and teamwork.
11. Play develops and maintains a healthy self-concept, establishing and
strengthening self-esteem and self-confidence.
12. Rough and tumble play facilitates the development of emotional regulation and
cognitive development.
13. Play facilitates the development of strong problem-solving skills and creativity.
14. Play provides children the opportunity to explore, learn lessons, practice skills,
and make mistakes without being in danger.
15. Play paramount to a child’s ability to be flexible, adaptable, and to cope with
small and large transitions.
16. Play increases a child’s resilience to meet future challenges.
17. Play helps children experience greater self-responsibility by allowing
them a sense of control and mastery in their play.
18. Play helps parents tune into their child and understand
who their child is. Play also helps parents know what their
child’s needs are, what drives their child, and what
interests their child about the world.
19. Play facilitates a strong bond between the parent and
child that lasts throughout the lifespan.
20. Play makes parenting easier. The stronger bond helps a child
feel important, understood, and accepted. This bond results in
children responding more favourably to rules and structure put in
place by parents. This strategy works for teachers too!
For Adolescents:
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21. The brain is reorganizing itself and is in its second major stage of development
during adolescence.
As with infancy and childhood, play is every bit as
important to the process of development including: creativity, motivation,
enhancing performance, understanding the world, and finding oneself.
22. Play maintains strong parent-child bonds while adolescents start the process of
differentiating from the family.
23. Play maintains a strong self-esteem and self-confidence that was developed in
childhood.
For Adults:
24. Frequent play breaks helps adults focus better on the task at hand.
25. As with children, play continues to help adults make sense of their world and
understand themselves better.
26. Play stimulates creativity.
27. Play relieves stress and has a positive effect on mental health.
28. Play increases joy and satisfaction in work and in life in general.
29. Play stimulates processing of dilemmas and challenges; it increases problemsolving abilities, and increases the number of possible solutions to a dilemma.
30. Play creates and maintains strong bonds in couple and parent-child
relationships.
31. Play wards off Alzheimer’s and
dementia by developing new
neural connections and
strengthening existing ones.
For Employers:
32. Play in the workplace increases
productivity, develops higher
job satisfaction, increases
company morale, enhances
the team environment, and
decreases absenteeism.
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So How Do We Play?
If you have not played in a long time, you may have forgotten how. What follows is a
brief list of pointers to understand what play is and how to engage in it either
individually, with your family, or with peers.
1. Find something that brings you joy and lose yourself in it. If you are immersed in
play you should feel like time is suspended and find it difficult to pull yourself
away from the activity.
2. The activity you choose should be engaged in for the purpose of pleasure and
not have a specific goal.
When engaging in play with children there are also several rules to keep in mind:
1. Be at your child’s eye level and follow them around.
2. Allow your child to choose the activity and direct how it should go. Please note:
Videogames do not count as play.
3. Play with your child is not a time for lectures. If limits
are needed they should only be used for the safety of
people and objects. And, if limits are set they should
only be set when needed.
4. As with adult play, there should not be a purpose in play
except to enjoy each other and the activity. If you find yourself
teaching or making the activity educational you are no longer
playing.
5. Find something that brings you and your child joy and
engage in it.
So if you choose to do anything for yourself and your family today
choose play. In the words of Stuart Brown “play is like fertilizer for
brain growth. It’s crazy not to use it” (p. 101).
References
Brantton, S.C., Landreth, G. L., Kellam, T., & Blackard, S. R. (2006). Child Parent Relationship Therapy (CPRT) Treatment
Manual: A 10-sesion filial therapy model for training parents. New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.
Greenspan, S.I. (1995). The Challenging Child: Understanding, raising, and enjoying the five “difficult” types of children.
Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc.
Brown, S. (2009). Play: How it shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul. New York: Penguin
Group.
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