Kevin Baldeosingh
You know the saying: it asserts that there should be a balance between work and play. But that proverb was coined at a time when children were sent to work in factories to earn money for their families. And, as a matter of empirical fact, a child's work is play.
"Learning through play can be more efficient than learning from instruction, not least because the latter is rather boring to the young while play is arousing," notes anthropologist David F Lancy in his book The Anthropology of Childhood, which compares child-rearing practices across different cultures.
Psychologists have long known this fact, but only recently have the extraordinary cognitive benefits of play on the child's brain been properly researched. In Brain Rules for Baby, American scientist John Medina cites studies showing that children who had open-ended playtime displayed more creativity, wider vocabularies, better memory and were more socially skilled.
In fact, writes Medina, "If low-income kids were exposed to play-oriented preschools in their earliest years, fewer than 10 per cent had been arrested for a felony by age 23. For children exposed to instruction-oriented preschools, that figure was more than 33 per cent."
The government-funded Early Childhood Care and Education centres (ECCEs) have started on the right track, since they officially de-emphasise academic learning and focus on play activities. Unfortunately, this pedagogically correct approach is being undermined by some of the teachers themselves, who still think teaching small children letters and numbers is crucial for academic success. Yet this focus on instruction might actually harm a child's capacity for learning.
Lancy notes: "Children's ability to take in and process information from the environment suggests an unlearned capacity for...'open attention'." This kind of attention is wide-angled (the child is aware of many things in the environment simultaneously, and doesn't attend to just one source of information, like a teacher or video-game) and abiding (attention is sustained, not episodic or short-term).
Have you ever noticed, for example, how your child may appear to be concentrating on playing with her bulldozer while you chat quietly with your mother but, minutes later, asks you why Aunty Maria getting a divorce? Lancy cites a study showing that children and adults from modern Western societies showed short fleeing attention spans as compared to Mayan mothers and children, and suggests that "It may well be that open attention is subject to a critical period during which, if it is not exercised, it will be extinguished."
However, it's not just any kind of play which provides cognitive benefits to children. "The secret sauce is not unstructured, do-anything-you-want play," Medina writes. "The type of play that gives all the cognitive benefits is a type that focuses on impulse control and self-regulation."
The type of play is called mature dramatic play (MDP) and has to be engaged in for many hours a day. An MDP school programme called Tools of the Mind has been developed, and its three main components are (1) planning the child's play; (2) direct instruction on pretending (eg, the rules for pretending to be a chef or a fireman); (3) a room with plenty available toys and tools and random objects.
You can create this kind of environment in your home and, if your child goes to a pre-school, make sure that they have lots of play-time.