Adults can support positive learning and developmental thinking in young children.

The book, “A World of Play”, has all the magic ingredients to help.

As we approach the holiday season I think it even more important that families feel equipped to play with their young children rather than baby-sitting them before TV. In Western Australia it is somewhat scary to think that 30% of our children between the ages of 5-15 watch more than 2 hours TV a day. 
I believe this would be a similar figure internationally.

I hope that this book might help parents, grandparents and carers. A World of Play is a practical and optimistic book.  This book gives parents permission to play and how to play. It helps them flex those play muscles they used to have but which may now have turned rusty!!!  I believe it is a MUST read for all families and adults who support young children from the ages of 1-8 years old.

At a serious level, I think parents sometimes underrate the importance of play and their role in it. Children do not automatically know how to play. Nor do they automatically make sense of their world on their own. They need adults to help make sense of their world and later they need adults to allow them the opportunity to reshape the adult thinking and to fly on their own. 

Holbrook Jackson said, “What a mother sings to the cradle goes all the way to the grave.” This we know. Three year olds have more neural pathways than adults and children’s brains are about 2 1/2 times more active than the adult. How they use their brain in early childhood has an impact on how the brain is wired for later thinking. Of enormous importance appears to be the fact that the primary caregiver mediates an infant’s early experiences. What families do with their young child is of crucial importance in brain development.

We need to recognize that the mental health of our children is at risk. It is somewhat sobering to re-read something like the 1998 Child and Adolescent component of the National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing in W.A. In it, 14% of young people aged 4-17 years were reported to have a mental health problem. In 2009 about 1/5 of WA population was under 15 years old (438,600 children) 14% of that is 61,404. This is a staggering figure.  When a statistic becomes a real child with a name and a place in society, it is a huge sadness to think that our children have become under such pressure or part of a wider communication disconnect within family life. 

In the Health and Wellbeing of WA 2009 Overview and Trends, on average, parents believe that more than 1/4 of our children needed special help with emotional problems. 
If one adds to that staggering statistics such as 75,000 prescriptions of anti depressants were written for children under the age of 15 in the year 2005-2006, then I believe we need to ensure the resources to help redress the trend.

Obviously my bias is that we need to recognize that the quality of the infant-carer relationship is of crucial significance. Sound and meaningful relationships can be made through play. Play is often said to be a child’s work; it is a platform for fun and exploration. I believe it is the platform for families to make strong, safe and lasting relationships. 

Play enables children to explore the customs and roles of their direct community, to reflect upon their inner selves and their emotions, to encounter abstract thinking, to problem solve and to develop communication skills. Play is also often said to provide a vehicle for children to create meaning from their experiences and to sometimes place bad experiences into a more manageable space.  Play enables children to explore rules and consequences and social interactions. Play develops memory and synthesis. It develops cognitive thinking and meta cognition.

Positive Play facilitated by adults and developed freely by the child, supports all aspects of a child’s development. When children are solving problems, and symbolically representing their experiences, they are highly creative and spontaneous and their actions are of a high intellectual order. WOW! All of that when one is simply having fun!

Play requires space, opportunity and most importantly, safety. It requires time, managing and facilitating, but not smothering by a caring and involved adult. Activities at home however can be the perfect opportunity for a child to practice skills in a safe and supportive environment. If that is so, then parents, grandparents and extended family members need to be armed with the tricks of the trade. With the play ideas at their fingertips in this book, they do not need to scratch their memory for resource. 

The critical resource for growth obviously must eventually lie within the child and not outside. The task of the family however, is to give the young a strong sense of their ability to effect the present for the better.

I believe that how we play with our children at an early age, how we listen to them and encourage them, how we gain their trust and respect, will help them sail on through life more confidently and energetically. To that end this book, A World of Play”, is not only filled with a plethora of exciting activities, crafts and games grouped in a thematic structure that would interest most young children, but embedded in the play are a myriad of ways to shore up emotional resilience, to teach children how to explore their inner feelings and those of others.

Children can practice through play how to be fair, how to meet disappointment and how celebrate success. Supporting emotional growth through play is a key ingredient often missing in other books on play. Furthermore, if adults were to read the small excerpts called “the Magic Mum” at the beginning of each theme, they would pull together a strong picture of what a child needs from an adult in play:  - e.g. “She does not spend a long time on the telephone with her friend in the middle of our play, but tells them she will call them back” or “She makes me feel successful and skilful. She does not make me feel I have to cheat to win. There is no pressure. I practice and learn some skills, but it is all fun.”

And so it is that I hope that parents, grandparents, carers, early childhood teachers, may gain much from this multi-layered book. On the surface, take it as a practical manual of things to play at home that will keep the young child 1-8 well occupied. Below the surface, see it as a plea for adults to devote some undivided attention daily to their child in a safe and supportive environment, see it as a way to provide strong foundations of learning in a fun and creative way and see it as a time in which children learn to understand their parents, the way that they think, the values they hold and how they react. These understandings are the basis of a long term loving family bonding process.
  
http://www.aworldofplay.com.au

Ruthie Hillen