All My Children

Most adults find it easier to involve themselves directly in complex and adult games, like chess or baseball, than in play on simpler levels, such as stacking blocks or riding a hobbyhorse or toy car. Although the terms “play” and “game” are often used interchangeably, they are not identical in meaning. Rather, they refer to broadly distinguishable stages of development, with “play” relating to an earlier stage, “game” to a more mature one. Generally speaking, “play” refers to the young child’s activities characterized by freedom from all but personally imposed rules (which, unless the child is compulsive, can be changed at will); by freewheeling fantasy involvement; and by the absence of any goals outside the activity itself. Continue Reading »

Play Is Voluntary

Whichever age group you visit, you might easily identify when children are playing; it seems so evident. When children are playing, they usually appear to be fully engaged and focused on their activity. It is typically an activity that they have chosen. Often, children will select an activity because they want to “hang out” with the other children who are participating. Therefore, the voluntary nature of play exists in relation to a particular context. Continue Reading »

Like most self-invented symbolic play, Goethe’s act, as previously suggested, had meaning on many different, important and urgent levels, whereas play material created by others can only rarely fit so well the always-changing demands of the moment. Goethe’s play expressed his feeling that he had been thrown out; his wish that his sibling should be thrown out; his punishing his mother by throwing her dishes out. But on still another level, Goethe probably wanted to get rid of all the dishes, so that he would no longer be fed from them, or be expected to eat from them. His sibling was being nursed, and his play expressed also his own desire to return to an earlier feeding situation that his competitor was now privileged to enjoy, and for which he envied him. Continue Reading »

When parents have an inner spontaneous empathy with the very special meaning play has for their child, this in itself does a great deal for the child and their relationship, even if the adults spend only limited amounts of time in play. What he needs most is their emotional commitment to the importance of his play, so that it can be fully significant to him. His frequent demand that we play with him represents his effort to gain, from our active participation, a sense that what he does is also important to us. If he gets this emotional message—if our conscious and unconscious interest in and respect for his play quiets his conscious doubts about it—the child will need less of our participation to remain convinced that we truly believe his activity is important. Continue Reading »

Premarital sex can also cause great emotional stress, and God wants to protect our children from that. Perhaps the biggest problem is the guilt that comes from knowing one has violated God’s standards.

As one young person said, “One of the worst feelings many sexually active people experience is to get up the next morning and realize the person lying next to them is a total stranger. This ‘morning after’ syndrome robs a person of a healthy self- image and a clear conscience, which decreases his ability to experience the transparency needed to cultivate an intimate relationship. On top of that, flashbacks from past sexual encounters can haunt a person the rest of his life, which can leave him feeling ‘grimy’ in the hands of his current lover.” 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 »

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 »

Through play, more than any other activity, the child achieves mastery of the external world. He learns how to manipulate and control its objects as he builds with blocks. He gains mastery of his own body as he skips and hops and jumps. He deals with psychological problems by reenacting in play those difficulties he has encountered in reality, as when he inflicts on his toy animal a painful experience that he himself has suffered. And he learns about social relations as he begins to realize that he must adjust himself to others if satisfying play is to continue. Continue Reading »

Each guest is given something to wear to indicate a Pooh character. To decorate the room make a tree (using a large branch from the garden or cardboard etc.) over the doorway, and this can be Pooh’s house. If you have a hatch into the kitchen, make this the entrance to Pooh’s house instead, and serve ice-cream or even a meal through it. Decorate the rest of the room with greenery to look like the forest.

An Easter Party

Primroses and other spring flowers, and fluffy chicks are all you need for table decorations, with perhaps Easter bunnies for place-markers, unless you are going to paint or decorate Easter eggs beforehand. Continue Reading »