Child’s Play

I have to admit it, I hate playing on the floor with my son. I enjoy reading to him, playing ‘Row Row the Boat’ and occasionally dancing around the lounge room.

But I draw the line at playing Duplo or making endless cups of imaginary tea. Instead, I’ll set up an activity and then get on with whatever else I was doing – working, attacking the laundry basket, reading trashy magazines.

I do feel guilty though. Shouldn’t I adore playing games with my toddler? They’re only little for such a short time, you know.

So I set out in search of some advice, starting with Stanley I. Greenspan,  Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at George Washington University Medical School. He has pioneered the term ‘floor time’ to describe interactive adult-child play, particularly in the treatment of autism. He maintains that floor time is essential for social development.

“As your child grows from infancy to school age, the importance of floor time goes far beyond just having fun. During floor time, your child will stretch his imagination and logical understanding of the world as he stages make-believe games and locks horns with you over rules. He’ll use gestures and words to express his needs and to explore a broad range of emotions, from exhilaration to anger. He will also hone his physical skills as his muscles strengthen and grow,” wrote Greenspan in his book Building Healthy Minds.

But floor time is not your time. No, according to Greenspan, the child should lead the play.

“During floor time, you’ll be getting down on your child’s level, joining him in his world and on his terms. You’ll be encouraging him to be the boss of all the drama that unfolds, and will follow his lead as an ever-willing sidekick–Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote.”

Other experts find the idea of a child-centred lifestyle the root cause of many modern ills.
Renee Mill, an Australian clinical psychologist and mother of four adult children, says there is in a well-intentioned but misguided belief that quality time means sitting on the floor playing whatever game their child wants.

Author of the book No Sweat Parenting, Mills claims that such practices only create a generation of exhausted parents and children who grow up believing they are the centre of the universe.

“We are growing monsters,” she said.

Similar beliefs are held by American writer Jean Liedloff, who spent two and a half years deep in the South American jungle with Stone Age Indians. Her experiences with the Yequana Indians led to the publishing in 1986 of of cult parenting manual The Continuum Concept.

While Liedloff sings the praises of Yequana practices like co-sleeping and babywearing, she believes modern parents get it wrong by giving too much actual attention to their children.

“The Yequana are not child-centered,” she wrote in an article for Mothering magazine. “They may occasionally nuzzle their babies affectionately, play peek-a-boo, or sing to them, yet the great majority of the caretaker’s time is spent paying attention to something else…not the baby! Children taking care of babies also regard baby care as a non-activity and, although they carry them everywhere, rarely give them direct attention. Thus, Yequana babies find themselves in the midst of activities they will later join as they proceed through the stages of creeping, crawling, walking, and talking. The panoramic view of their future life’s experiences, behavior, pace, and language provides a rich basis for their developing participation.”

Indeed, anthropologists have noted that parent-child play is a rare phenomenon around the world. For example, the goal of the Yucatec Maya is to keep babies in a “kind of benign coma,” through bathing and swaddling, so that parents can leave them and get work done.

Of course, most Western parents lead isolated lives. There usually aren’t older children around to mind toddlers and teach them how to use a bow-and-arrow.

So where does this leave the average parents who is tossing up between putting on dinner and building another Thomas the Tank Engine track?

Whether or not you play with your kids, it is still important to interact with them. Dr.Priscilla Clarke OAM and Executive Director of FKA Children’s Services Inc, says that the first three years are the foundation years for language development.

“The brain development is linked to positive experiences, including physical contact, cuddling, talking, playing and singing. Babies and toddlers need loving and playful opportunities to develop language.”

“Babies learn about language long before they say their first words. Interaction is an important part of language development. They begin to learn conversation skills early by giving and taking in interaction involving mutual respect and turn taking.”

A few things various experts stress again and again is cooing to babies, reading and singing to toddlers, and stimulating pre-schoolers with excursions and new opportunities for conversation and learning.

Now that does sound better than playing Barbies.