Children Understand About Themselves

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

What is play?

Play is one of the ways children understand about themselves, the people around them, their environment and their community. It is an important part of every child’s life and essential to their future development. Play fosters creativity, imagination, social connections and learned behaviors of children. It is the activity which can be defined as "a range of voluntary, centrally motivated activities that are normally associated with pleasure and enjoyment." ***(Ashley Parsons, Young Children and Nature: Outdoor Play and Development, Experiences Fostering Environment Consciousness, And the Implications on Playground Design; taken from Garvey, Catherine. Play. The Developing Child Series. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990). Through play, children learn to explore the world around them, develop and practice skills they will use throughout their whole lives. Play is defined as behavior that is freely chosen, personally directed and inherently motivated. Children should be given the restriction of safety in a practicable and freedom way. In addition, children should be in control of how they play, but not criticize or scold them for example telling a child the ‘right way’ to hold a paint brush will deny children many of these first hand experiences. Play is essential for physical, emotional and spiritual growth; intellectual and educational development; and social and behavioral skills of a child. A child’s capacity for positive development will be inhibited if denied access to a range of stimulating play opportunities. Play often, though not always, implies a sense of fun for the child. (http://www.valeofglamorgan.gov.uk/enjoying/leisure__activities/play/development/what_is_play.aspx)

"Nature-deficit disorder is not an official diagnosis but a way of viewing the problem, and describes the human costs of alienation from the nature, among them: diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses. The disorder can be detected in individuals, families and communities." – Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods.

Sheridan Bartlett defines play as passionately engaging in the surrounding world through "exploration, manipulation, physical exuberance, experimentation and pretence, either alone or with others." (Bartlett, Sheridan. "Children’s experience of the physical environment in poor urban settlements and the implications for policy, planning and practice." Environment and urbanization. (1999) vol 11 no 2 pg 68)

Marianne B. Staempfli states that not only is play important for brain development as Bartlett suggests, but play also helps children develop "flexible and divergent thinking" which then provides children with the ability to solve real world problems. (Staempfli, Marianne B. "Reintroducing Adventure Into Children’s Outdoor Play Environments." Environment and Behaviour. (2009) vol 41 no 2 pg. 272)

Play can serve as a type of therapy, allowing children who suffer from pressure or stress situations, for example like traumas, emotional issues, family stresses, and etc. to recover. Recent design and planning research has shown that the environment used for play is important. Children see things differently than adults. Nabhan and Trimble (Nabhan, Gary Paul and Trimble, Stephen. The Geography of Childhood: Why Children Need Wild Places. Beacon Press: Boston. 1994 pg.10) have a discussion on this topic in a different way. They state that adults view the landscape at a larger scale and are able to see the big-picture of the playscape, such as a panorama with picturesque views. Children look at niches within their immediate environment. The children see only the moments in the landscape which offer immediate play opportunity. Example for this situation, when parents bring a child to outdoor playground, the child firstly see the slide then the child runs towards the slide and start to play, or the child ask the parents or other siblings to play with him. (Ashley Parsons, 2011)

The definition of nature, in many ways that most of which has included an element of vegetation and also the diversity of concepts and constitution. Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder offers little scientific support for the need for children’s outdoor play, but he does illustrate the growing opinion of environmentalist and green parents that the declining direct interaction between the children and nature is having negative effects on children’s wellbeing.

Schools are the most important places to construct outdoor playscape for children. It is because school is the initial part and the very first for children to be in touch with social.

Both outdoor play and indoor play foster the children’s ability and understanding to the environment. Outdoor play offers children a diversity of environmental stimuli that contributes to increased use activity and experimentation with social situations that prepare children for future life experiences, while indoor play which is mostly offers digital play that can adopt the creativity of the children.

Importance of play

Most of the children today have little direct experience in the outdoors as a part of their daily lives. While there are always exceptions, for the most part, children today are rarely engaged in unstructured and imaginative play of their choosing in rich and diverse nature-based settings. A growing body of research suggests that this disconnection, this nature-deficit disorder, may be associated with an epidemic of childhood obesity, diabetes, behaviour disorders, high blood pressure, higher stress, higher aggression, reduced and diminished productivity are among the possible associated negative impacts.

One of the most basic and healing ways that can help to increase children’s healthy, peaceful, positive development is to provide them with the opportunity for a direct connection with the natural environment in the outdoors. The children need to experience nature, to connect with nature, this activity can help them understand more about the world around themselves and in addition, the relationship between siblings and also parents can be improved too.

Most children today are being given a virtual, often vicarious, electronic, passive and cocooned experience of childhood. Most of the reasons that cause this situation, like adults’ fear for their children safety, scare of "strange people", fear of bullying and many other reasons. As many cases are happening at all time all places, and have cause the adults do not want to let their children to go or play outdoors. In the parents’ opinion, they think that the children might be kidnapped by strangers dramatically but that is not a wrong thinking, prevent is better to let it happens. But in the opposite, the opportunities for direct learning in the outdoors as a fundamental and foundational part of school curricula are missing. Lack of exercise and an extremely sedentary lifestyle on the part of many children and teens has contributed to an epidemic of obesity.

To conclude that, play is important in a life of childhood. As above have mention, if put too much control to limit a child’s action, they will not happy. In addition, the relationship of the families will also be affected. Play cannot be excreted in one’s life as this can cause unpredictable situation like heart attack, high blood pressure and others on the children’s body. It is such a tragedy for children to face the merciless disease like this since as they are just on the start of the life only. The literature review that has been mentioned by Richard Louv, he said that nature has deep connection with the children, and also this has helped me a lot in my further research.