All My Children

Children need to develop a range of skills in order to utilise play experiences to the full. These can be considered in six areas and generally, there needs to be a fairly balanced development in each one. The six areas are:

Social — where the child shows an interest in other people and begins to develop empathy

Communication — where the child wants to communicate through verbal and non-verbal communication

Fine motor skills — where the child develops fine motor co-ordination and dexterity

Gross motor skills — which are related to mobility and body posture Imagination and thinking skills — needed for pretend play

Attention — where the child develops concentration and focused attention

It can be very useful to use the following tables as a checklist to consider children’s strengths and the areas in which they may need support at different ages and stages. Continue Reading »

The event of a new birth is a time for celebration and thanksgiving in most parts of the world. Family and friends visit the mother and the new baby to wish them good luck and happiness. Gifts are offered, usually food, clothes, toys or money, and religious prayers or custom-led domestic rituals are enacted for the infant. An orthodox Jewishfamily may pin a red ribbon to the crib to ward off the ‘evil eye’; in Bali, the placenta is taken and solemnly buried; in the ancient world it was a custom to place the new-born immediately upon the ground. ‘Man alone at the very moment of his birth‘, wrote the learned Roman, Pliny the Elder, ‘cast naked upon the naked earth…’ Continue Reading »

How important such play is in establishing selfhood was demonstrated to me by an eight-year-old autistic girl. As often happens, the severe pathology of her case permitted observing a phenomenon also seen in normal behavior but as if it were under microscopic enlargement, or thrown into bold relief by a bright light. This girl had been virtually mute all her life. She completely rejected all efforts to reach her physically or verbally, and was unresponsive to all aspects of her environment. She resented all efforts to make contact with her; if one reached out to her actively, she responded with angry, terrified withdrawal. Continue Reading »

While just this or that poor impulse,

Which for once had play unstifled,

Seems the sole work of a life-time

That away the rest have trifled.

In the days when parents and children played the same games, they shared a virtually automatic understanding of the purposes of play: to be both meaningful and enjoyable. This is still true concerning the most primitive, earliest, and hence most important play, that of the infant—and woe unto the child if it is not.

When a baby tosses a rattle out of his crib and his mother hands it back to him, in their moment of mutual delight the mother hardly notices the fact that in this new achievement, her infant is asking himself some very important questions: “Can I influence my objective environment without dire consequences to myself? Can I safely assert my will and manipulate objects without suffering for it? Can I rid myself of something that annoys me? Can I relinquish control of my belongings temporarily without losing them altogether?” Continue Reading »

Since the child often cannot really know what will be done to him, many events not actually painful will nevertheless make him fearful. After such an event, a child will typically play out the experience in fantasy. Following a visit to the dentist, for example, the child might play at fixing another child’s teeth, telling him to keep his mouth wide open, as he himself was instructed, and inserting little pieces of cardboard to take X rays. If no other “patient” is available, a toy animal will do. The many hours a child may spend in such play is a clear indication of how much actual time he would have needed in the dentist’s chair in order to truly understand what was done to him and why, and to deal appropriately with all the emotions the experience aroused. Just as we can understand and analyze events that move too fast for our comprehension by watching them in slow-motion replays, so the child learns to understand and analyze, through long hours of repetitious playback, events previously beyond his comprehension. Continue Reading »

For example, a child may repeatedly put blocks, toy figures, or other small objects into a truck or box, only to spill them out, put them back in, and spill them out again. A problem with which he may thus be struggling in symbolic form is the one posed to him by defecation: “How is it that something put into my body, such as food, comes out of it, often in small pieces? Does it mean I am losing something permanently from my body?” Putting his blocks into a truck and spilling them out again shows him that, contrary to his anxiety, nothing gets permanently lost in this process. A truck is good for this play because it moves about easily, as the child does, and it carries within its body the small pieces that get spilled out, as he carries food within his body, only to spill the contents of his bowels into the toilet. Continue Reading »

The more opportunity a child has to enjoy the richness and freewheeling fantasy of play in all its forms, the more solidly will his development proceed. Later encounters with learning, games, and sports will strengthen and enhance his knowledge and mastery of the world. But for games and sports, or even for learning to be fully meaningful, his prior experience with play must already have provided a firm foundation. This is why culturally deprived children who had little chance to play and were little played with by parents have such a hard time in school—without the experience of succeeding in play, they do not trust themselves to succeed in school. For this reason, it is not sufficient for parents to wait to share in play activities when they reach a more formalized stage. The older child’s activities may offer more intrinsic interest to a parent, but by that time it may be too late. Both kinds of experience—play and games—are necessary for growing up well. Children lose out on a great deal if TV viewing or even activities such as academic learning prevent them from having rich experiences with both play and games. The ability to enjoy games builds on the play experience. Continue Reading »

A few gifts can actually be more satisfying than an overabundance— that is, if the commercialization of Christmas and the ubiquity of television advertisements have not aroused a child’s expectations beyond all reason. The giving of a few presents eliminates the ambivalence a child may feel about giving and receiving (discussed earlier). This issue is recognized by a children’s holiday which is celebrated in many European countries including Holland, Continue Reading »

Daniel, a thirty-year-old father of a newborn, expresses this regret. “My parents never told me why we did things—why we lit candles, why we fasted, why we ate matzoh. I always had to read about it,” Daniel continued, “and I resented it. When my daughter is old enough, I’m not going to make that mistake. I’m going to explain things, even if it’s ‘a pain.’ ”

A good time to discuss rituals is prior to, during, or just after their performance. That way the event will be fresh in your child’s mind. If your child does not ask about the basis of a religious practice, you bring it up: “Did you wonder why we celebrate each year?” Continue Reading »

Not only can we feel guilty if we don’t love them equally, but also if they don’t achieve equally.

When there is a difference in age, differences in ability or achievement can be accepted more easily. If it’s the younger child who has a particular skill, the older one may still be ahead because of his years. On the other hand, the older child’s interests and seniority may make comparisons less likely. In the last resort parents may say, ‘Well, they’re two individual children and they have to accept their differences.’ This is not to say that it won’t cause problems; it may still do so. Continue Reading »