The Case For Make Believe
Why your kid's most important job is to play.
by Susan Linn
October 16, 2009
In The Case for Make Believe (New Press, 2009), author and Harvard child psychologist Susan Linn explores the growing threats to our children's capacity to make believe, and why this trend spells disastrous consequences for their intellectual, emotional and social development. In this passage, Linn explains why imaginative play sets the foundations for children to thrive. Babble also spoke with Linn about why kids no longer know how to play.
I have been immersed so long in exploring the relationship of play to children’s experience that it’s sometimes hard for me to believe everyone is not as passionate about it as I am. But I am rescued from this myopia whenever I leave the office. When I bring play into a conversation I find that most people’s eyes glaze over. I imagine they’re thinking, "But play is so frivolous! Why should I even care about it?"
Why indeed? I attended a celebration recently that was populated mostly by adults and just a few small children. I was doing what grown-ups do at such occasions — laughing and talking with friends and family — when I felt something brush by my leg and looked down to see two small girls weaving in and out of the crowd. "Sister, sister," one cried to the other, "the witch is coming! Run! Run!" Intent on their fantasy, oblivious to the adults around them, their exuberance and palpable joy was a wonder to behold. That it evokes such delight is reason enough to place play high on my list of passions. But there’s so much more. The capacity to play is a survival skill.
Most child development experts agree, for instance, that play is the foundation of intellectual exploration. It’s how children learn how to learn. Abilities essential for academic success and productivity in the workforce, such as problem solving, reasoning, and literacy, all develop through various kinds of play, as do social skills such as cooperation and sharing.
When allowed to flourish, each child’s pretend play is unique — like fingerprints.
I appreciate and value these aspects of play, but my true passion lies elsewhere: in exploring how play is linked to creativity and to mental health. My particular passion is make believe, or pretend play, which I think of as creating fantasy characters, imagining different realities, and transporting ourselves to pretend worlds other than the one we live in. Children’s make believe is rooted in their unique experience of people and events. When given the opportunity to play, it comes naturally to them and serves as an essential experience of self-reflection and expression. It is a gift, both to children and to the adults who care for them, and can be a window into their hearts and minds.
When allowed to flourish, each child’s pretend play is unique — like fingerprints. A four-year-old of mixed religious heritage speaks through a dog puppet to say, "My heart is Jewish, but the rest of my body is Christmas." A six-year-old facing surgery turns the same dog into a doctor. A five-year-old just back from a dentist appointment tells it to "open wide." Another child transforms it into a mom kissing her child good-bye at day care. In another child’s hands, with a different family experience, the dog as mother watches implacably as her child drowns. Some children pass up the dog completely, choosing to speak through a hippo, a dragon, or a cow. A few shun my puppets altogether during our sessions, preferring to draw, build, or make music.
Pretend play combines two wondrous and uniquely human characteristics — the capacity for fantasy and the capacity for, and need to, make meaning of our experience. By fantasy I mean imagination, daydreams, and the stories we may or may not share with others that design the future, reshape the past, make new things possible, and illustrate powerful feelings. By making meaning, I mean the drive to reflect on and wrestle with information and events so that they make sense to us, enrich us, and help us gain a sense of mastery over our life experience.
©2009 Susan Linn
About the Author
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Susan Linn is Associate Director of the Media Center of the Judge
Baker Children’s Center and an Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard
Medical School. She has written extensively about the effects of
media and commercial marketing on children. |
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