PLAY VS ENTERTAINMENT
You have heard many times the saying that play is the work of childhood. You have also heard many times the motto “Work hard and play hard”. How do these two come together? Well, probably they don’t. In our civilization playing hard points to entertainment, while play as the work of childhood points to something truly meaningful. While children nowadays might be consuming too much entertainment, their involvement in real play is in decline. We tend to entertain children too much, but we generally fail in providing them with the opportunity to engage in true play. While children can do without entertainment, without play they are bound to languish.
WHAT IS ENTERTAINMENT?
Entertainment is something we engage in to avoid boredom, to kill time in an idle way, avoiding effort. Watching a cartoon or a battery propelled dog bark and wag its tail is entertainment.
WHAT IS PLAY?
Feeding your doll is easy to recognize as play. However, painting a fence (as described in “Tom Sawyer”) can be play too, just like baking cookies with Granny or even sweeping the floor. You have seen toddlers trying to do everything they see adults do, even the things we, adults, frown upon, as for us these are chores.
Play is coveted. Despite the fact that it takes effort and focus, that striving to do the thing properly might lead to frustration. No problem, we are prepared to try many times with the tenacity of an ant lugging a delicious crumb. Especially if we are an innocent child.
“MAKE-BELIEVE IS THE HALLMARK OF YOUNG CHILDREN’S PLAY”
wrote W. George Scarlett in his seminal academic book “Children’s Play”. He says that young childhood is the golden age of pretend play – not only because young children (3-5) do it so well but also because no matter how a young child plays, make-believe is always present, even if we don’t see it directly.
“This point was brought home in a classic case study by Sylvia Feinburg (Feinburg, 1976) in which she described her son Douglas’s combat art. As a young boy, Douglas drew hundreds of pictures of battle scenes. To the casual observer, Douglas’s drawing would simply be seen as drawing, but Feinburg saw it differently. She noted how Douglas, while drawing, made battle sounds, shouted out military orders, and otherwise indicated that, for him, drawing was hardly a matter of producing pretty pictures. Rather, it was a matter of make-believe.” (Chapter 3)
If you’d like to explore the idea further, you can find Sylvia G. Feinburg’s essay “Combat in Child Art” in the academic collection “Play: its role in development and evolution” on ResearchGate.
WHAT MAKES CHILDREN ENGAGE IN SYMBOLIC PLAY?
CHILDREN PLAY TO MAKE THEIR DREAMS COME TRUE
Children have so many wishes they cannot satisfy in real life – they want to drive cars and spaceships, to pet and tame tigers, to build castles, etc. Their only way to satisfy these wishes and avoid frustration is to engage in play and pretend.
CHILDREN PLAY TO EXPLORE THEIR INTERESTS
They are interested not only in what they see in their immediate surroundings but also in far away places and times. Here is why they love playing with dinosaurs, and they enrich their play with everything they have learned about dinosaurs.
CHILDREN PLAY TO OVERCOME THEIR ANXIETIES
Pretend play helps children cope with their anxieties and fears. They enact some of their negative experiences in play but do it in a healing way.
CHILDREN PLAY TO MAKE FRIENDS
Play is the primary context in which young children relate to one another. This is the natural way to enjoy the company of their peers. We are eager to tell you more about this soon.
Here is why play is so important for young children. It is vital, and entertainment cannot replace it or compensate for its lack. How would you feel if you were deprived of the opportunity to satisfy at least some of your wishes, to explore your interests, to overcome your anxieties and fears or to make friends?
FOLLOW-UP
We love exploring symbolic play (also called pretend play, make-believe play, etc.) and sharing our findings, so follow our blog and social media channels for blog posts and mini-books.
Here are some of our older texts on symbolic play:
The importance of symbolic play