Play, Like Love and Happiness

Play is like love or happiness. We can't define it, but we know it when we see it, when we feel it, when we're in the midst of it. Play is likewise like love or happiness in that if you think about it too much, it has a habit of disappearing or morphing into something else. 

On Tuesday, I mentioned neuroscientist and psychobiologist Jaak Panksepp. He once conducted an experiment in which he invited people from various walks of life to watch video of rats interacting energetically with one another. He then asked them whether the rats were fighting or playing. The adults all called it fighting. The only group that correctly identified the behavior as rough-and-tumble play were young children. Play, again like love or happiness, is a matter of perspective. 

I'm not surprised by Panksepp's finding. Play, like love and happiness, can really only be understood by the person experiencing it. Adults are forever scuttling the games of children because they misunderstand what's happening or because they allow their catastrophic imaginations to get the best of them. 

As a child, I was one of a group of neighborhood boys who enjoyed playing tackle football. One day, Mr. Sain saw his son John, a slightly older and larger boy, dragging a half dozen of us along as we attempted to bring him down. Mr. Sain, on behalf of the entire neighborhood, banned tackle football for all of us. Obviously, he worried that John was going to injure one of us little kids, but he was already too late for that. We already knew that it hurt to attempt to tackle John. We also knew that if we worked together, if we hung on tenaciously enough, we could bring him down. We knew what we were doing was play and we knew that pain was a possible, even likely, consequence of this rough-and-tumble game. Mr. Sain may have saved us a few bumps and bruises, but he robbed us of the joy of successfully tackling John, while John was robbed of the joy of overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds. As well-intended adults often do, Mr. Sain taught us about "touch" football and "flag" football (non-tackling versions of the game). We tried them, but ultimately moved our game to yards that weren't in sight of the Sain's front windows.

Play, like love and happiness, are states that are achieved and understood through doing rather than through contemplation or study, especially from the outside looking in.

I once taught a group of four and five year old girls who called themselves "Mean Sisters." Their game was, frankly, ugly. They bossed one another around, excluded one another, and even sometimes called one another names. "Let's play Mean Sisters," they would invite one another, agreeing, then find a corner where adult eyes couldn't see them. They often spoke in whispers so that adult ears couldn't hear them. They knew from experience that we were all potential Mr. Sains, adults inclined to put the kibosh on their game. At first, I tried to divert them into more savory play, but whenever I stepped in with my adult observations or ideas or admonishments, they would stop, look at me in collective exasperation, and say, "Teacher Tom, we're just pretending." As you can imagine, the Mean Girls were a subject of much concern and speculation amongst us adults, but ultimately all we really understood was that these girls were all choosing, again and again, to play this game in which they knew that pain was a possible, even likely, consequence.

As important adults in the lives of young children, job number one is to keep them safe, so we step in when we think we see violence or bullying. Sadly, as Panksepp's experiment illustrates, we're not always very good at telling the difference between actual violence and bullying and play violence and bullying. We fear that they will be physically or emotionally hurt. Beyond that, our catastrophic imaginations cause us to fear that if we allow these games to continue, that they will grow up to be violent bullies and we want them to learn just the opposite lessons about life.

But here's the challenge: the world beyond the walls of our preschools is one in which violence and bullying are a reality. One thing we think we know about play is that it is the mechanism through which we've evolved to process what we encounter in our world and by which we practice the skills and habits that will allow us to navigate a world in which everything isn't all play, love, and happiness. As evolutionary biologists see it, this kind of play is the primary way that animals learn about altruism, tolerance, forgiveness, and fairness. By playing with conflict, we are learning to be better people.

After all, how can we ever comprehend light without darkness? How can we ever comprehend love without hate? How can we ever comprehend happiness without sadness? Play is the way we've evolved to explore life from all sides, including, and especially, the perspective of others. As boys playing tackle football with a bigger boy, we were learning, amongst other things, how to work together. As Mean Sisters, the girls were learning, amongst other things, how it feels from both sides. This is how play works . . . like love and happiness.

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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 (like Lenore!) 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 by clicking here or finding us anywhere you download your podcasts.

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