One of the most frequent (and most important) questions we get asked by clients is ‘how do I play with my child?’. We understand it can be tricky for adults to feel confident with ‘playing’ as it’s a skill we have most likely forgotten. We have grown up and moved away from the simple fun we had in childhood. But, play is the critical part of all childhood learning, so if we are going to help children develop their speech and other skills, we need to try and remember ‘how’ to play!
When we are adults, to understand and remember the’ how’ we first need to remember the ‘why.’ Why is play such a critical part of early childhood development and why is it such a key experience for children who are experiencing delays?
Piaget describes play as ” The work of the child.” It is the way that children explore the world around them and how early brains develop. The TV presenter Fred Rogers summed it up too when he said “Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.”
It is seen as something separate from everyday life, that routines need to be stopped or interrupted so that we can have allocated time to play. But let’s spin this on it’s head for a minute- play is everything for a young child. It is all that they do from waking up in the morning to going to bed at night. Play is life and life is play.
What does that mean for a child who is perhaps experiencing the world a little differently? What about the child who is engaging in rigid and repetitive activities? What if a child does not speak? How can we know or understand how they play?
We see a lot of children who may be labelled by health or education professionals as being ‘delayed’ in their play development or defined as ‘not having appropriate play skills’. However, we would argue that every child that we see is already playing. They are exploring their world and problem solving and learning about the things that interest them. They may just look like they are doing the ‘playing’ in a different way. It does not mean that they do not know how to play!
Going back to our blog post on Making sense of the sensory is crucial here. As we know from looking at children’s sensory preferences, we often see young children who have specific sensory needs or interests and this informs their play. Understanding these differences and preferences is crucial for adults who are trying to use Play2Talk in their interactions and for anyone that works with young children with developmental differences.
Rather than looking at things from a ‘how can we teach this child to play appropriately’ angle, we look in detail about how the child already plays and how we can use these individual preferences and motivations to join them! There is NEVER a wrong way to play and it’s important to keep this at the forefront of any interaction with young children, particularly those who are experiencing the world in a different way.
In Play2Talk we ask parents/ carers and other adults to observe the child in their own preferred activities to try and understand a little about which sensory area they may find motivating (and which sensory inputs they may find upsetting or overwhelming). Once we have this foundational understanding in place, we can work with the child to develop activities and ‘play’ that engages them. We then move quickly towards creating these experiences as ‘2 person’ shared control activities.
We may discover in our observations that a child loves visual feedback and seeks this out in their play . This could be through spinning items/ watching things at the corner of their eye or watching objects fall. We look at creating experiences where the child would engage in rolling items down a ramp or a slide, or maybe spinning games with toys and objects. We look for ways to make the adult the critical ‘player’ in the game, where the child is super motivated to want the adult to be their play partner and spin/ roll/ crash objects and be more likely to take part in this activity as a 2 person, back and forth routine.
Play and play skills are something that we as adults are guilty of over complicating and overthinking. But by its very nature play is about having fun, for no other purpose than to enjoy! If we take the lead from the children that we are working with and look at their individual motivation, we can’t go far wrong. There is no correct way to play. We need to come away from thinking along a linear, developmental trajectory for this. Instead, we simply need to look for the smile and the laughter and meet our children where they are. They can teach us so much!
So, get down on the floor, crawl around, chase and be chased, fill and empty buckets and boxes, blow bubbles, sing songs, spin and jump, flap, whoop, stand on you head, smile with your child and laugh. This is play!