Let your child be a child

By John Muturi

You have seen that innovative commercial on your TV screens with the rider: ‘Play and grow’. When it first popped up on the screen — just before my popular TV programme, — I dismissed it for just another manufacturer’s gimmick to advance sales. It displayed children playing in a dirty environment, then soccer and finally in the racetrack with their bikes. On the onset, it appeared like a time-wasting activity and thinking about the adage, ‘Time is money’ I would rather the children were in a classroom or doing homework with the assistance of their parents.

But the more I thought about the advertisement, the more sense it started to make. The children were learning a lot from their play. Yes, play encourages a child’s intellectual development; it enlarges his or her social skills in relating to other children and adults and encourages them to be independent as well.

Miniature adults

Most of us take children simply as miniature and slightly incompetent versions of adults. They are not. They are made differently and think differently from adults. The process of childhood is very important and serves a major purpose. Childhood experiences help a child develop essential skills in a relatively safe environment — under the care of parents and other adults. In his or her formative years, the growing child acquires specific intellectual skills such as speaking, reading and writing one or more languages. It also helps the child develop socially, emotionally and physically.

The special mechanism through which children (and young animals of other species) acquire and develop skills is called play behaviour. Hence, playing is not just a waste of time but a period to learn important things about themselves, about other members of their species, and about the world in which they are growing up.

There are different types of play, all of which stimulate the development of a different aspect of your child’s life, depending on his or her level of maturity, her individual interests, and also the toys available to him or her. For instance, infants from the age of 18 months to two years engage in exploratory play through which a growing child discovers the world around him or her. Only by reaching out and exploring does a baby begin to make sense of her surroundings. That is why different activity toys attached to the side of the cot are so popular. A baby is fascinated by the different reactions she gets from it. And the more discoveries your child makes, the more she wants to explore further.

Dr Richard C Woolfson says in his book, A-Z of Child Development: "Once the child is able to move around independently, she can be more adventurous in physical play. Physical play — whether crawling, running, jumping, balancing, climbing or kicking — encourages a child’s independence and boosts her self-confidence.

And social play where two or more children play together teaches them how to get along with each other, how to take turns, how to follow basic rules, and how to be fair".

Children also engage in problem-solving activities in which they learn by solving a puzzle, jigsaws, form-boards, building bricks, lotto and other matching and memory games. This type of play encourages a child to think about her actions and their consequences, to plan strategies for tackling new problems, and to learn through trial and error.

Woolfson explains: "Any single action can serve several purposes. Throwing a ball to another child is social play because it involves cooperation; it is physical and manipulative (problem solving) because her limbs are involved; and it may also be imaginative, if the ball becomes an entirely different object in her mind. Try to ensure that your child has play experiences that cover the whole spectrum."

Through play, young children learn how to compete and compare with other individuals. They learn how to deal with their emotions and those of other people. They learn about, and extend their physical capabilities, exploring ideas and exercising their creativity in ways that most adults have long since lost. Children are basically ‘made’ to play, and they benefit enormously from doing so. Even though the benefits of play are often delayed and may not be realised until adulthood, they are benefits all the same. Depriving children of play can have long-term costs.

Adults mess childhood

Sadly, however, half the time adults downplay the importance of childhood and play by being excessively anxious about their child’s safety and measurable (usually academic) achievement. In their eagerness to protect their children from dangers, both real and imaginary, some parents try to insulate them from the real world. And in their fervour to give children the best possible start in life, some parents and schools push them too early or too hard to perform academically, at the expense of other things.

Social scientist, Frank Furedi, cautions that parents who become excessively anxious about their children’s safety, often respond by restricting their freedom and depriving them of opportunities for free play. This is called ‘paranoid parenting,’ and one of its most obvious manifestations is the trend for parents to drive their children everywhere rather than let them walk with their friends. It is true that driving them might reduce the risk of their being mugged, run over by vehicles or abducted, but it also deprives them of the opportunities for play, social interaction, independence and physical exercise.

Most parents of school-aged children, for instance, will never allow them to play with water, climb trees or play on climbing equipment. It is essential to protect children but sometimes parents need to step back and think more about the costs of such restrictions, in terms of lost opportunities for the child.

"There is a balance to strike between the desire for total safety and the need to let children have a normal childhood. Excessive concern about measurable achievement (pushiness) can also impinge on childhood and play. For a combination of reasons, some parents and schools seem to have become preoccupied with pushing younger children to perform in ways that can be measured, quantified and compared. Testing, and assessment have fuelled this tendency. At their worst, they can distort the priorities of parents and schools by diverting their attention away from other important things such as children’s social, emotional and physical development.

I am certainly not suggesting that it is wrong for children to receive a challenging and rigorous academic education reinforced with regular testing and assessment. Pushing children is not inherently bad: the real issue is how they are pushed," explains authors Kristina Murrin and Paul Martin in their book, What Worries Parents.

In addition, problems can arise if children are pushed to learn certain things too soon. A child who is not yet ready to read and write may not respond well to formal teaching. They may under-perform and experience failure. Indeed, some children can be turned off education for life.