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The Changing Nature of Play
February 22, 2008
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
-John Muir
-John Muir
"It turns out that all that time spent playing make-believe actually helped children develop a critical cognitive skill called executive function. Executive function has a number of different elements, but a central one is the ability to self-regulate. Kids with good self-regulation are able to control their emotions and behavior, resist impulses, and exert self-control and discipline.
"We know that children's capacity for self-regulation has diminished. A recent study replicated a study of self-regulation first done in the late 1940s, in which psychological researchers asked kids ages 3, 5, and 7 to do a number of exercises. One of those exercises included standing perfectly still without moving. The 3-year-olds couldn't stand still at all, the 5-year-olds could do it for about three minutes, and the 7-year-olds could stand pretty much as long as the researchers asked. In 2001, researchers repeated this experiment. But, psychologist Elena Bodrova at the National Institute for Early Education Research says, the results were very different.
"'Today's 5-year-olds were acting at the level of 3-year-olds 60 years ago, and today's 7-year-olds were barely approaching the level of a 5-year-old 60 years ago,' Bodrova explains. 'So the results were very sad.'
"Sad because self-regulation is incredibly important. Poor executive function is associated with high dropout rates, drug use, and crime. In fact, good executive function is a better predictor of success in school than a child's IQ. Children who are able to manage their feelings and pay attention are better able to learn. As executive function researcher Laura Berk explains, 'Self-regulation predicts effective development in virtually every domain.'"
Read or listen to the entire NPR segment, "Old-Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills,"
Now you can earn continuing education units (CEUs) from the University of Wisconsin-Stout for reading Exchange articles. To learn how you can do this, check out Exchange's new CEU program!
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Comments (8)
Displaying 5 of 8 Comments [ View all ]Pennington Presbyterian Nursery School
Pennington, New Jersey, United States
I found this article to be true of what I have seen, observed and been part of during my 18 years teaching and now directing in a preschool that emphasizes and supports the value of play. From the first time I meet a family considering our school, I explain to them that we consider play invaluable for their child's participation in the world and in becoming a global citizen. Often, parents concentrate on the skills that will be taught and assessed in the primary grades, forgetting that, later on, students will be required to take the facts and skills they have learned and create something completely new and original with that knowledge. They will need to think outside the box with confidence and having had the practice that unstructured, self-regulated play provides. One of my greatest joys as a director is walking into the classrooms in my school and observing the wonderful things that are going on when the children are allowed to think and play on their own. The planning, thinking, cooperation and creativity evident in each activity is amazing.
Thank you for this article! I will be passing it out to my families next week!
Hillsdale, N.Y., United States
I appreciated this article. On the very important issue of play for young children, please go to the www.allianceforchildhood.org website. They are mounting a national campaign to restore play in pre-shcools and kindergartens and in our society in general.
Stone Mountain, Ga., United States
Being an early care educator, I found this article to be astounding in terms of self-regulation and understanding adults better. I am sure if this study has this much effect on young children can we imagine the effect of adults today. I have experienced adults that shows so much emotion during positive critiquing that they have lost the ability to move forward and improve their skills to learn affectively.
Yu Der Kindergarten
Kuala Lumpur, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
As an early chilhood educator in Malaysia, we constantly argued with other teachers and parents about the importance of play, especially outdoor play. Early childhood program is very academic centered , parents do not want their children to spend time playing because it is ' A waste of time'. Self regulation is very low here. My collegue and I are delighted when we read this article. We will be distrbuting this article to all our parents this week.
Westminster Presbyterian Church Preschool
Westlake Village, CA, United States
This article from Exchange and the NPR segment were so validating it a world where Play gets a "bad reputation". It was reassuring to again hear the reasons for deepening our sense of commitment for allowing and defending the value of play especially in our child care facilities.
I'm in the process of figuring how to get this information in to the hands and heats of all my parents at my center.
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