My Connections to Play

My childhood playground 

I was fortunate enough to have grown up before the age of helicopter parents and before the invention of computers and smartphones. For me growing up in rural Alaska, raised by parents forged during the Great Depression who believed that children should be not seen and not heard, that children should be outside playing or doing chores made me who I am today.  Probably the most frequent thing we heard from our parents was, "Go outside and play".

Our family had few resources, and even though our neighbors were much more well off in material goods than we were, all of us kids preferred playing and exploring outside far above playing with indoor toys. Every day, rain, shine, snow, or cold was an adventure. We discovered new places in the woods, tried to dig to China, climbed trees, followed streams up the mountain, pretended we were pioneers, teachers, and parents, cooked stews with wild plants, sledded, skied, built snow forts, flew on the springs of pulled over young saplings. All we needed was a stream, a mountain, dirt, and trees. All our senses were engaged as we smelled the sap of the trees, tasted the plants, felt the roughness of stones on our bare feet, heard the songs of birds and the howl of wind, saw every color nature could afford.  Countless were the outdoor flights of imagination and fantasy. I remember very little of school, but my memories of play and the fun we had are powerful and strong to this day. My direct interaction with the texture of rocks, the smell of upturned earth, and the joys of everything a tree can be grew in me a fierce love for the natural world and a desire to preserve it. "We could never have loved the earth so well if we had no childhood in it." -George Eliot

Even though our parents did not spend loads of quality time with us or enroll us in after school programs, most of us kids on the mountain grew up independent, self-confident, and capable adults.  The freedom to explore, to fall down, to figure out how to climb a tree, to hike unsupervised up mountains, gave us the opportunity to learn deeply by trial and error.

I didn't think twice about following my dream to teach overseas after university. It never occurred to me to question myself. I believe that confidence came from my parent's giving me the freedom to play freely- outside.

Today, free play has fallen into a state of disgrace. Parents are encouraged to keep their children busy with directed afterschool activities and homework. They feel guilty when they just let the kids play. Children "play" sports which is all good, but still directed and structured. With the advent of smart phones and tablets, now much of playing means engaging in a computer game. With all these modern play options, children engage with someone else's rules or imagination, and they don't have the chance to exercise their minds to make up their own rules and invent their own imaginary worlds. The sensory world has been reduced to the feel of one finger on a smooth computer screen surface.

Based on the number of blogs and websites out in cyber-land, it seems as if a few people are standing up and saying "no" to this destructive trend and advocating for a back to nature and free play approach. They are, however, from my observations of people in many different countries, in the minority. 

I am encouraged by the few young people I know who want to raise their children in a less structured, more play-centered environment. May they live long and prosper.

Play doesn't stop as we age, it simply becomes more targeted as a part of creating. The opportunities we had to practice learning by trial and error in our play become foundations for our adult creativity. Maslow said, “Almost all creativity involves purposeful play” (yourtherapysource.com). As adults, we "play around" with ingredients and come up with a new dish. We "play around" with artistic materials or furniture to create new visually pleasing scenes.  We keep playing. 

Robert Frost's poem, "Birches" encapsulates the feeling of my childhood.

Birches

BY ROBERT FROST   poetryfoundation.org

When I see birches bend to left and right

Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boy's been swinging them.

But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay

As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them

Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning

After a rain. They click upon themselves

As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored

As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.

Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells

Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—

Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away

You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.

They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,

And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed

So low for long, they never right themselves:

You may see their trunks arching in the woods

Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground

Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair

Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.

But I was going to say when Truth broke in

With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm

I should prefer to have some boy bend them

As he went out and in to fetch the cows—

Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,

Whose only play was what he found himself,

Summer or winter, and could play alone.

One by one he subdued his father's trees

By riding them down over and over again

Until he took the stiffness out of them,

And not one but hung limp, not one was left

For him to conquer. He learned all there was

To learn about not launching out too soon

And so not carrying the tree away

Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise

To the top branches, climbing carefully

With the same pains you use to fill a cup

Up to the brim, and even above the brim.

Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,

Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.

And so I dream of going back to be.

It's when I'm weary of considerations,

And life is too much like a pathless wood

Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs

Broken across it, and one eye is weeping

From a twig's having lashed across it open.

I'd like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.

May no fate willfully misunderstand me

And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:

I don't know where it's likely to go better.

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

But dipped its top and set me down again.

That would be good both going and coming back.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.