A Crisis of Imagination
I spend the entire day hanging out with people who are as tall as my hip (most of the time) and who think of the 1990's as the darkest of ages. You would think that spending my days with small children would give me constant access to fantastical stories and pretend play. You would think that when given free rein to fashion a new world or imagine a story, these little people would take one giant leap at that chance. You would think that kids would bounce between real life and the adventures they dream up in their heads with great ease. If you think those things, you would be wrong. One of the saddest discoveries I've made in this transition to working with our littlest learners is that kids just don't seem to know how to play and imagine things anymore.
This realization came to the forefront of my mind today when I tested out a brand new board game I'd purchased called "The Talking, Feeling, Doing Game." In this game, players roll dice to travel along a colorful path and are prompted to answer questions that require them to talk about something, reflect on feelings, or make believe they are doing something. Nearly every child with whom I played that game today struggled with the concept of making believe. When I modeled the pretend play, they could usually jump on board the imagination train, but it was clear to me that they weren't regular passengers. Several times, the students clearly wanted to answer the question, but were really stymied by the concept of imagining things. Some might argue that because I am the school social worker, I am more likely to encounter students who have social deficits. I might have argued that myself. However, several of my students are the "good kids" who have friends, do well academically, and are just hanging with me due to some family change or other temporary family stressor. Even they seemed to struggle with the open-ended imagination questions.
I know there are significant issues we are facing on a global scale. I worry about the girls being victimized across the globe and even in our own backyards. I lose sleep about children waking up to bombs blasting their homes to smithereens. I fret about politics and religion and inequality. So, when I say that I see this "play deficit" as a real crisis, I come from a place of understanding the nature of crisis. Children who don't play grow up into adults who didn't play and in the world of social emotional development that is a huge problem.
When I was a little girl, I managed and processed my world through play. My Barbies re-enacted scenes from my favorite books, helped me try on different personas and ways of being, and allowed me to problem solve and role play conflict resolution. There were no finely tuned lesson plans, there was no curriculum to guide me, but through that play I managed to figure out a lot of "stuff" and that stuff is important.
Social emotional learning is the social worky way of saying we want kids to grow up to be decent people. We need employers and employees who have integrity, are honest, and who know how to resolve conflicts effectively. I think most people would argue that showing compassion and demonstrating empathy are important skills humans need to develop in order to have healthy relationships. I would also venture a guess we all want innovation and creativity to continue to blossom. We need dreamers, inventors, peace makers, and empathic leaders. I fear that we are losing the next generation of these kinds of people because our kids just don't play. Empathy is all about imagining what it would be like to be someone else. If kids don't practice that with their dolls or action figures, how else do they practice it? Innovation and creativity come from trying lots of stuff and making mistakes. If we give our kids "kits" to do and give them all of the directions all of the time, how will they know how to take healthy risks to see what happens? How will the next inventions be dreamed up if no one knows how to dream?
Our kids need to play and I don't mean the kind of play where a bunch of grown ups tell them exactly what to do every single moment. The project does not need to be a perfect copy of that "oh so cute" pinterest creation. The sports activities don't all need to be "coached" all of the time. They don't always need a model or a pattern. We need to give our kids blocks and dolls and space and art supplies and then we need to take a big step back and let them be. I'm not saying organized activities are bad; my kid are in a kajillion of them. But, kids need more chances to play without grown up interference. They need to make messes and clean them up, both literally and figuratively. And we need to give them permission to make those messes.
I'm going to work hard to bring the play into my practice a bit more. I am going to push my students to dream, pretend, and imagine. And at home, when someone asks me if they can have that box or if they can use that wire or yarn, the answer will always be "yes."
Hopefully yours,
Sara Renee
This realization came to the forefront of my mind today when I tested out a brand new board game I'd purchased called "The Talking, Feeling, Doing Game." In this game, players roll dice to travel along a colorful path and are prompted to answer questions that require them to talk about something, reflect on feelings, or make believe they are doing something. Nearly every child with whom I played that game today struggled with the concept of making believe. When I modeled the pretend play, they could usually jump on board the imagination train, but it was clear to me that they weren't regular passengers. Several times, the students clearly wanted to answer the question, but were really stymied by the concept of imagining things. Some might argue that because I am the school social worker, I am more likely to encounter students who have social deficits. I might have argued that myself. However, several of my students are the "good kids" who have friends, do well academically, and are just hanging with me due to some family change or other temporary family stressor. Even they seemed to struggle with the open-ended imagination questions.
I know there are significant issues we are facing on a global scale. I worry about the girls being victimized across the globe and even in our own backyards. I lose sleep about children waking up to bombs blasting their homes to smithereens. I fret about politics and religion and inequality. So, when I say that I see this "play deficit" as a real crisis, I come from a place of understanding the nature of crisis. Children who don't play grow up into adults who didn't play and in the world of social emotional development that is a huge problem.
When I was a little girl, I managed and processed my world through play. My Barbies re-enacted scenes from my favorite books, helped me try on different personas and ways of being, and allowed me to problem solve and role play conflict resolution. There were no finely tuned lesson plans, there was no curriculum to guide me, but through that play I managed to figure out a lot of "stuff" and that stuff is important.
Social emotional learning is the social worky way of saying we want kids to grow up to be decent people. We need employers and employees who have integrity, are honest, and who know how to resolve conflicts effectively. I think most people would argue that showing compassion and demonstrating empathy are important skills humans need to develop in order to have healthy relationships. I would also venture a guess we all want innovation and creativity to continue to blossom. We need dreamers, inventors, peace makers, and empathic leaders. I fear that we are losing the next generation of these kinds of people because our kids just don't play. Empathy is all about imagining what it would be like to be someone else. If kids don't practice that with their dolls or action figures, how else do they practice it? Innovation and creativity come from trying lots of stuff and making mistakes. If we give our kids "kits" to do and give them all of the directions all of the time, how will they know how to take healthy risks to see what happens? How will the next inventions be dreamed up if no one knows how to dream?
Our kids need to play and I don't mean the kind of play where a bunch of grown ups tell them exactly what to do every single moment. The project does not need to be a perfect copy of that "oh so cute" pinterest creation. The sports activities don't all need to be "coached" all of the time. They don't always need a model or a pattern. We need to give our kids blocks and dolls and space and art supplies and then we need to take a big step back and let them be. I'm not saying organized activities are bad; my kid are in a kajillion of them. But, kids need more chances to play without grown up interference. They need to make messes and clean them up, both literally and figuratively. And we need to give them permission to make those messes.
I'm going to work hard to bring the play into my practice a bit more. I am going to push my students to dream, pretend, and imagine. And at home, when someone asks me if they can have that box or if they can use that wire or yarn, the answer will always be "yes."
Hopefully yours,
Sara Renee
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