Ditch the rules

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Is there a difference between building a Lego structure according to the instruction booklet, and creating an original design from your imagination? Turns out there is. The latter is an open-ended play experience – one that is not led or directed by adults. It’s the type of play children should be engaged in to grow and learn, say experts.

But the problem is, kids are doing less of it than ever before. A 2013 study found that children aged three to six have a play gap of nine hours per week. That is, they have nine fewer hours of open-ended play per week than their parents had. The study, conducted by Playeum, an independent non-profit organisation that promotes play and creativity for children in Singapore, surveyed 101 parents. What does this trend mean for you? Young Parents asks the experts for their advice.

OUR EXPERTS

Sumitra Pasupathy is co-founder of Playeum.

Helen Marjan is joint CEO of Lorna Whiston Schools.

Brian Caswell is Mindchamps’ dean of research and programme development.

Patricia Koh is CEO of Maple Bear Singapore.

So, what’s behind this play gap?

Sumitra: One thing is that we live very hurried and busy lives – not only in Singapore, but also globally. So, we are quite busy and stretched for time, and our children are also increasingly doing more and more extracurricular activities after school.

The other thing is that our environment is very structured. If you look at our playgrounds, our schools and even preschool areas – all of them have rubberised mats. Of course, that’s to maintain hygiene and cleanliness but, at the same time, it’s a very different experience from playing on grass and mud, or if there are big trees in playgrounds with a lot of branches and twigs, or if there is sand or an area with water collecting in the ground. And that limits what children can do in the environment.

The third thing is safety. Parents are becoming increasingly concerned about child safety, and they’re too afraid of letting their kids fail or get injured. I read that less children are breaking their arms, compared to the past – because they’re not climbing trees anymore! If you don’t know how to climb a tree or know how to fall, then, the moment the ground is slippery, you’re going to be the first one to fall.

As parents, we are more cautious with our children. If I think about my own three kids, of course, the first one was so precious, but by the third one, I’d say: “Oh, okay, you’ve got a cut.” And he’s stronger for it. Often, you’ll find that kids are very strong and very robust; they can pick themselves up and keep going. But it’s us parents who concern ourselves so much with letting them explore, experiment and discover.

Why is it important for my kid to have enough time to play?

Helen: First and foremost, play is perhaps the ideal way for children to learn: it allows them to use their imagination, to be creative, and to work things out for themselves. As they engage in play, they are able to explore, question and discover, building upon their understanding of the world around them and further arousing their curiosity. Free play encourages children to learn how to solve problems and figure things out for themselves, thus nurturing greater confidence and independence.

Patricia: It is difficult to quantify playtime, as different kinds of play can happen any time in the day. Kids cannot tell the difference between structured and non-structured learning. A structured day can be very fun, as long as parents and teachers are engaging children positively and creatively.

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5 ways to play better

Sumitra Pasupathy of Playeum, who has three boys aged 11, nine and four, shares her favourite open-ended play experiences.

THE SANDBOX always keeps my children busy for hours. We add different supplementary elements to allow for different play ideas. Sometimes, it includes providing minianimal toys, or sticks and branches.

“MINI MAKER” SPACES are where we collect a range of used materials for children to play and make things. This involves toilet rolls, milk bottles and obscure things like buttons, old small fabric scraps, and old T-shirts cut into strips.

As a family, we can play together to make and create things; with some fun tools such as fabriccutting scissors and a hot-glue gun. Sometimes, we have more directed outcomes like making a birthday card. This can even become a larger play activity if we collect boxes of different sizes.

PLAYING OUTDOORS in the park, collecting sticks and branches as well as stones, is one of my youngest son’s favourite activities to do together. Finding branches of different sizes allows for various play activities. Once, he collected over 50 sticks and stones and arranged them in a particular order that he wanted to display them. Soon, he had quite a few friends join him to find sticks and they played for a very long time.

MUSIC JAMMING The older boys like their guitar, drum and piano and often, with their dad, they tinker with the instruments and play music in different ways, as opposed to playing according to the musical scores. Sometimes, we just play different tunes to make music together. This can include using software programs like Garage Band to create our own dance music.

WATER PLAY is our simplest family playtime and does not necessarily involve a lot of water wastage. We used to have small pails of water which the kids spent hours scooping and pouring through different things, or creating a bath for their little toy animals for pretend play session. We often involve a lot of free painting alongside water play, too. As they get older, they enjoy running around with water sprays and fountains while playing outdoors.

Play teaches him how to express and cope with emotions. He learns to take turns, to share and to appreciate the feelings of others.

Why should I be concerned about this lack of open-ended play?

Brian: For children to enjoy an enriching childhood, it is essential for them to be given sufficient time to discover both the world and themselves in a fun and age-appropriate way. If we deny them the time to play, we stifle their ability to learn later in life, by inhibiting the development of essential neural networks related to association, problem-solving and even the recognition of “cause and effect”.

Young children learn by experiencing the world “hands-on”. They are sensory and emotional learners, whose stage of cognitive development is unsuited for the misguided “tutoring” drilling and cramming to which too many children are subjected. It is unfortunate that in our society today, kids are deprived of the important pleasure of play because parents, with the best of intentions, seek to provide them with a head start in education by sending them for various “enrichment” classes.

Sadly, many of these programmes attempt to treat children as “little adults”, making demands that leave the child bored, frustrated and stressed – and these emotions can colour all later learning experiences – detrimentally affecting cognitive, physical, social, and emotional wellbeing and personal growth.

Helen: Overscheduling a child with too many adult-driven activities can be detrimental to his emotional health. Play teaches him how to express and cope with emotions. He learns to take turns, to share and to appreciate the feelings of others. Moreover, he learns how to express his own feelings, both verbally and non-verbally, in ways that are appropriate to different contexts, people and situations.

How does my kid benefit from open-ended play?

Sumitra: When your child is touching, feeling and building using different parts of his hands, he’s creating new sensory connections in his brain. That helps his development. Another great thing is that whatever he makes is his. It’s not a design you told him to make or a manufacturer told him to make. It’s his design and once he has made it, he has so much ownership and pride that all these other things start developing, like confidence and creativity, and even verbal skills – he’s talking, creating stories and sharing them.

What can I do to incorporate more playtime?

Brian: The key – as with everything else in parenting – is to ensure that the child does not feel overburdened and stressed (by studies or structured activities, in particular). Moreover, it is essential that parents avoid becoming fixated on establishing a routine for their kid. How much playtime is enough? As much as the child enjoys and gains advantage from. How much “study” time is enough? As much as he can stand without developing negative connotations with the act of learning. Eventually, it all boils down to finding the best system for each child to ensure his personal growth.

Can’t that extra time be used for academics instead?

Sumitra: One of the biggest challenges about the play gap is scheduling. Even structured activities like sports or music can also be done playfully – music is a classic example. Your child can understand the theory of music, but he can also create his own compositions around music and jam around with it. And his music teacher can do that with him, too. There’s formal music education in which he’ll learn certain things, but there are also playful ways of creating music.

But doesn’t he need formal education for a better future?

Sumitra: How many children with music certificates are still playing as an adult? I think there isn’t enough value placed on unstructured play, and families still think that knowledge acquisition and rote learning and certification is the way forward. But I think it’s going to change very, very fast.

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Taking a step back, look at what’s happening in the world. There is a lot of technology and the future is in robotics, computers and artificial intelligence – you can learn your entire maths curriculum on the computer, and there are robots that can diagnose illnesses.

There was a study done that said about 60 per cent of the jobs that we know today won’t exist in the future. Kids aren’t going to need content or knowledge, because you can Google such things. The robots and computers can do it. But what they are going to need are the skills to make decisions, to collaborate and to have conversations, to negotiate. Take, for example, a doctor.

The diagnosis can be done by a robot, but it’s the doctor who has empathy and conversation skills. It’s an extreme case, but if our kids don’t play and don’t develop all these important skills, like creativity, collaboration skills, and empathy then, in 20 years’ time, they’re not going to have these skills to thrive. Brian: The successful 21st century citizen will be an innovator; a life-long learner; an intuitive problem-solver – creative, resilient, able to overcome adversity and learn from it.

All these traits are learnt in childhood – through play – very few of them are learnt through traditional academics. There is a place for academic learning, of course, but overstressing one small skill-set to the detriment of all others is short-sighted and counter-productive. As human beings, we are more than capable of altering our understanding and approach.

What prevents us from doing this is a backward mindset that resists innovation. Importantly, to be open to innovation, we need to become more “child-like” and to learn to play again. George Bernard Shaw once wrote: “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” Children are experts at play and as long as we don’t “organise it out of them”, they will remain flexible and innovative.

Play around the world

Lifestyle brand Ikea polled almost 30,000 parents, primary schoolers and teens in 12 countries about play and family life. Its 2015 Play Report, which covered Asian countries like India, South Korea and China, revealed that Singapore parents and kids aren’t the only ones who don’t have enough time for play:

49% of parents feel guilty about not having enough time to play with their kids and feeling “too stressed to enjoy playing”. This was higher than the 45 per cent recorded in the 2009 Play Report.

25% of kids feel that their parents organise too many things for them to do outside school, especially in the Asian countries surveyed.

59% of parents think play is best when educational, especially those in Russia, China and India. This is an increase from 45 per cent in 2009.

45% of kids like to make up their own activities.

25% of parents admit to occasional boredom when playing with their little ones.