Training for the Unexpected

In science journalist David Toomey's new book Kingdom of Play, he writes about an animal geneticist and ethologist named David Wood-Gush who established the "Edinburgh Pig Park," a place where domesticated animals were allowed to roam freely. The idea was that they could live as closely to their natural state as possible, yet still be easily studied by scientists. It was known at the time that pigs that played more tended to healthier, so Wood-Gush and his colleague Ruth Newberry decided that understanding more about pig play would lead to more humane treatment of pigs.

Like many mammals, one of the forms of pig play is to run around. This makes sense to scientists because, according to one of the major theories about the function of play in animals is that it allows us to practice skills we might need in the future. Running is obviously a good way to avoid future predators. One thing that surprised the researchers, however, was that periodically, while in the midst of running, piglets would, for no apparent reason, fling themselves upon the ground, scramble back to their feet, then continue running. This seemed like a less adaptive behavior. Indeed, it seemed like a good way to wind up as lunch.

Newberry continued to pursue this question and, along with colleagues in the US, came up with an idea they called "training for the unexpected." In the real world, an animal is running in natural terrain, which means it's littered with tripping and slipping hazards. The pig flop-over, they speculated, was in fact practice for the real possibility of having to recover from a fall while being pursued. "We hypothesize that a major ancestral function of play is to rehearse behavioral sequences in which animals lose full control of their locomotion, position, or sensory/spatial input and need to repair their faculties quickly."

There is no agreed upon definition of what play is among scientists, but this notion of "training for the unexpected" has become central to our current efforts to understand what play is all about. Evidence of this phenomenon is all around us. Young children are famous for putting themselves into disorienting positions. I've watched countless children doing their own version of the piglet flop. Children spin on swings, roll down hills, and diverge from almost every straight-and-narrow path in order to clamber or climb. Often their "flops" are objectively risky behaviors. And we all know that once is rarely enough, they must do it again and again and again, which is the hallmark of practice or training.

It doesn't make much of a stretch to see that their dramatic play is likewise an aspect of this phenomenon. By pretending to be someone or something they are not, they are preparing themselves to respond to the surprises that life will inevitably offer them. In contrast, so much of what we call schooling is focused on the knowable, the predictable, the standard, and planning for the future, but we all know that much of life as it's lived, perhaps most of it, is about how we respond to the unexpected, the tripping and slipping. As the Yiddish adage has it, "Man plans and God laughs." Play is, in this context, how animals prepare to get the last laugh: we may fall, our plans may go awry, but because we played, we know how to get back up and keep going.

We are currently experiencing an alarming spike in childhood anxiety, with children as young as three being treated for it. This is not true of all anxiety, but much of it manifests as fear of the future, and specifically a fear that we will not be up to the unexpected challenges that lie ahead. It's not a coincidence that the incidence of childhood anxiety is peaking at the same time that children are experiencing a deficit of play. As psychologist and retired professor of research Peter Gray writes, "Over the same decades that children's play has been declining, childhood mental disorders have been increasing . . . the rise in mental disorders among children is largely the result of the decline in children's freedom." In a world in which children are not free to play, in which they are over-protected and over-managed, in which they are forever being groomed exclusively for the expected and shielded from the unexpected, we are robbing them of opportunities to prepare themselves for the unexpected. No wonder they're anxious.

When an individual piglet flops, of course, it doesn't know it's training for the unexpected. It's doing it because it's fun thing to do. It's so fun that they do it again and again. Porcine play, like human play, like the play of animals ranging from bees to octopuses to elephants, has evolved as an almost universal adaptation to world in which man plans and God laughs. We are meant to do fun things, even if they are a bit risky. As the German philosopher and psychologist wrote in his groundbreaking 1896 book The Play of Animals, "The animal does not play because he is young. He has a period of youth because he must play."

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Hi, I'm Teacher Tom and this is my podcast! If you're an early childhood educator, parent of preschoolers, or otherwise have young children in your life, I think you'll find my conversations with early childhood experts and thought-leaders useful, inspiring, and eye-opening. You might even come away transformed by the ideas and perspectives we share. Please give us a listen. You can find Teacher Tom's Podcast on the Mirasee FM Podcast Network or anywhere you download your podcasts.

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