Children Do Not Need Toys To Have A Playful Childhood

It's difficult for most of us to imagine a space for children that doesn't include toys and lots of them. Classrooms, playrooms, even entire homes are taken over by these mostly plastic, mostly brightly colored things. Even teachers and parents who seek to impose limits, often find themselves awash in toys. They come in like waves upon the shore, borne by well-intended relatives and other benefactors seeking the favor of children or a new home for a toy that was "barely used." It's so bad that regular toys purges are required.

It's a phenomenon that emerged during the second half of the 20th century when manufacturers began to increasingly employ modern marketing methods to target children, and through them their parents. It's been such a successful enterprise that most of us consider it perfectly natural that if children are present there must be toys. In fact, many families travel suitcases stuffed with toys because they cannot imagine their children without them. This, of course, has not always been the case. For most of human history children didn't play with toys at all, but rather the real things they found in their world and from what I've observed over the years, when left without toys, most children, perhaps after a period of adjustment, don't miss them. Indeed, forest and nature school educators report that children in environments without toys to distract them engage more deeply and explore more fully.

If you place a toy lawn mower alongside a real lawn mower, we all know that the toy will be ignored in favor of the real thing. Real hammers are always preferred over toy ones. I once purchased a clutch of chid-sized brooms for the classroom, but the adult-sized brooms were always preferred. We often think of childhood as a time apart from the adult world, but children have other ideas as they are forever ignoring their toys in favor of the real world of boxes, sticks, and the pots and pans they pull from the kitchen cabinets. They will always prefer the fort they have made from their bedsheets over the manufactured playhouse. They will always choose your real telephone over the hollow plastic one.

This isn't to begrudge children all their toys. There is always a place for a few well-curated balls and dolls, some puzzles and board games. Building blocks of some sort are likewise welcome as are costumes. And although I classify them as transportation more than toys, wagons and trikes are fine things. It's not toys as much as the mountains of toys that's the problem, the ubiquitousness of them, the garish, plastic chaos. Children do not need toys to have a playful childhood. The long history of humanity shows us that. What they do need is a safe, lovely place in which they are free to make their own "toys" of the real world.

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What We Are Doing To Young Children In The Name Of "Instructional Time"

At the beginning of the 2015 school year Seattle's Public School teachers were on strike. They had a list of demands, most of which were ultimately met, including the requirement that all elementary school children receive a minimum of 30 minutes a day on the playground. As pathetic as that victory might sound to those of us who live and work in the world of play-based education, some schools were limiting their charges to 15 minutes of recess over a school day. This is not an uncommon phenomenon in America and indeed many other parts of the world.

As heartlessly cruel as this sounds, it's the result of administrators and teachers who have bought into the entirely unsupported myth that more "instructional time" will result in "better results," and that every moment of free play, especially outdoors, is a waste of time. Meanwhile, 17 million children worldwide have been prescribed addictive stimulants (like Ritalin), antidepressants and other mind-altering drugs for "educational" and behavioral problems, over half of them in the US. Already one in ten American students are on these drugs and the fastest growing segment are children five and under.

This from the UK: 

Tests to assess . . . children's physical development at the start of the first school year found that almost a third to be "of concern" for lack of motor skills and reflexes. Almost 90 per cent of children demonstrated some degree of movement difficulty for their age . . . The tests suggest up to 30 per cent of children are starting school with symptoms typically associated with dyslexia, dyspraxia, and ADHD -- conditions which can be improved with correct levels of physical activity, experts say.

What's to blame? Lack of physical play is a big part of it, but there's more. According researcher Dr. Rebecca Duncombe:

"Young children have access to iPads and are much more likely to be sat in car seats or chairs . . . But the problem can also be attributed to competitive parenting -- parents who want they children to walk as soon as possible risk letting them miss out on key mobility developments which help a child to find their strength and balance."

And why do we have competitive parenting: because our schools, indeed our entire educational environment, is built around the idea of competition; around the cruel caution that "You don't want your child to fall behind." Bill Gates and his ilk have succeeded in "unleashing powerful market forces" on our children and this is the result. Because we have to get them ready for the "competitive job market of tomorrow," we've herded them indoors, where they spend their days locked in being force-fed "knowledge" like it's some sort of factory farm. It's so bad that we have to drug them. It's so bad that 90 percent of our four-year-olds aren't even getting the opportunity to learn how to move their bodies properly. The only other human institutions of which I'm aware that regularly drug and confine people are prisons and mental wards.

Instead of understanding the truth about young children -- that they need to move their bodies, a lot, and preferably outdoors -- we have created a very, very narrow range of "normal" into which we are forcing our children. This is outrageous. It's malpractice. And it's on all of us for letting it happen.

I usually try to end these posts on a positive or hopeful note, but the best I can do right now is to say that at least Seattle's Public School kids are getting their 30 minutes a day outdoors . . . Unless, of course, they are being punished, because taking away recess is one of the more common "consequences" for children who can't sit still and focus. And if they fail too often, we drug them.

Parents: the more time your children spend outdoors, playing, the smarter they will be. Create it at home and demand if from our schools. Teachers: the more time your students spend outdoors, playing, the smarter they will be. Create it at school and demand more of it from your administrators. This is the science. This is what we know about children. What's happening now is nothing short of institutionalized child abuse and we're all a part of permitting it to happen.

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Playing Their Way To A State-Of-The-Art STEM Education

(Note: I hate that I need to write this post, just as I hated writing my post about how children learn to read through play. Play is a pure good and should not need to be defended, but I also know we live in a real world where  policy-makers still consider play a mere relief from serious work rather than a core aspect of the real work of being human. I hope, at least, that those of you who do need to defend play will find this useful.)

My wife is the CEO of a software company. Earlier in her career she was an automotive executive and has held senior positions in several technology-based businesses. She is, as she realized to her delight not long ago, one of those much sought for rarities: a woman with a successful STEM career. That said, she studied languages at university. That's right, languages, not science, technology, engineering or math, yet here she is today running a technology company.

One-to-one correspondence

Science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM as they are collectively called in the contemporary lexicon, has become an emphasis for our schools both public and private. The idea is that those legendary "jobs of tomorrow" will require STEM skills and so we are feverishly "educating" our children to be prepared for their future roles in the economy. Setting aside the hubris embodied in the assumption that anyone can predict what jobs our preschoolers will grow up to hold, science, technology, engineering and math are important aspects of what it means to be human and fully worthy of exploration whether or not one is going to one day require specific employment skills.

These boys are swinging while simultaneously trying to avoid being hit by the swinging tire, a game that involves science, technology, engineering, and math, among other things.

Science, after all, is the grown-up word for play. As N.V. Scarfe wrote while discussing Einstein, "The highest form of research is essentially play." I know a number of scientists and whenever they are discussing their work, they describe it as play: "I was playing with the data and guess what I discovered," or, "I played with the variables and you won't believe what I found." Conversely, the highest form of play is essentially science as children ask and answer their own questions with both rigor and joy without the soul-sucking artifice of rote.

Working on math skills at the art easel.

Technology, which is the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, is how children typically extend their play, building upon their discoveries to further explore their world.

Engineering is the process by which children create their technologies, be they dams intended to hold back flowing water or springboards designed for jumping into it.

Exploring a circle

And math is something humans have to be taught to hate because, after all, it is the process of learning increasingly complex and wonderful ways to do things that give us great pleasure as human animals: patterning, classifying, and sequencing. When we boil it down, that's the entirety of math, which is ultimately the foundation of analytical thinking.

Constructive play forms the foundation of engineering knowledge. In this case, she is also exploring set theory, including the  horses in one set while relegating the other types of animals to another.

The tragedy of STEM education in the early years, however, is that too many practitioners have concluded that we must engage in extraordinary measures to teach it, that without lectures, worksheets, and drill-and-kill testing it simply won't happen, which is, in the lexicon of a generation long before mine, pure hogwash.

This two-year-old is exploring the technology of a lever or a balance scale, striving to find a balance point.

STEM education is not a complicated thing, children are already doing it when we leave them alone to pursue their own interests in a lovely, varied, and stimulating environment. We can, however, destroy their love of science, technology, engineering and math by turning it into the sort of rote learning that involves authoritarian adults dictating what, how, and by when particular knowledge is to be acquired or skills learned. A good STEM education, at least in the early years, is a play-based one; one that takes advantage of a child's natural curiosity; that gives free rein to their boundless capacity for inventiveness; and that understands that vocational training is but a small part of what an education should be about.

These hydraulic engineers spend their days working together to manage the flow of water.

When we step back and really observe children in their "natural habitat," which is while playing, we can see the STEM learning, although it takes some practice because it's intertwined with the other important things they're working on like social-emotional skills, literacy, and the capacity for working with others, which is, at bottom, the most important "job" skill of all. Indeed, while we are only guessing at what STEM skills our preschoolers are going to need in the future, we do know that getting along with our fellow humans is the real secret to future employment, not to mention happiness.

What happens when I stick this in there?

When my wife was a preschooler, no one envisioned computers on every desktop, let alone on every laptop. The internet hadn't even made an appearance in science fiction novels. And we all carried dimes in our pockets just in case we needed to make a call on a public phone. Today she is the CEO of a software company by way of the automotive industry by way of the jobs that her study of languages made available to her when she stepped into the workforce. The problem with predicting what specific "job" skills our children will need in the future is that we can only guess, because it's not us, but the children themselves who will invent those jobs, just as my wife has invented her own STEM career.

That said, when we allow children to explore their world through play, we see that they are already scientists, technologist, engineers, and mathematicians. We don't create them, but rather allow the time and space in which those natural drives can flourish, and that's how we ultimately insure that our children not only have the narrow skills that may or may not be necessary for those jobs of tomorrow, but also for the broader purpose of living a good life.

I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

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The Common Struggle

It was born as a whicker picnic basket complete with plates, cups and cutlery, but was converted a decade ago into the container in which we store a collection of dolls along with their wardrobe. They aren't particularly popular dolls as playthings go, but I continue to trot them out a couple times a year because there is occasionally a kid or two who will drop everything else they're doing to engage in the challenge of dressing and undressing those dolls.

The basket is held closed by a pair of leather straps secured by metal clasps that operate in a manner that most preschoolers haven't before encountered. I had put the basket on a table with the straps fastened, which I intended as a sort of invitation, figuring that few kids would be able to walk past without wanting to solve the mystery of what was inside. And sure enough, as the kids began to arrive, my invitation was accepted as a cluster gathered around the table, asking, "What's in here?" their fingers prying at the edges of the lid, struggling to get it to open.

I was standing a distance away, watching, even a little excited to see how the children would solve the challenge of those clasps. That's when an adult stepped in and opened the clasps for them. The kids said, "Dolls," then stood looking at them unenthusiastically for a moment before moving on to something else. It's the sort of thing caring adults too often do: the kids were working together to solve a kind of puzzle, but they were robbed of an opportunity for independence, collaboration, and perhaps even epiphany by a well-intended adult. I was determined that the same thing wouldn't happen with the afternoon class.

This time, I gave specific instructions to the appropriate adult to not help. She asked, "What if they ask me?" I answered, "Play dumb."

Sure enough, a group of kids gathered around the basket as they had in the morning, asking the classroom at large, "What's inside?" The first attempts to open the box involved force, but soon they discovered the clasps. They tried pushing the mechanism; they tried sliding it. One boy thought that maybe the leather straps needed to be cut, but others were sure that the solution involved those clasps. After several minutes of hive minded teamwork, they managed it. As they opened the lid to reveal the dolls, they squealed, "Dolls!" "Cool!" "This one has a baseball hat!" Never before had this particular collection of dolls received so much enthusiastic attention.

It's quite possible that the kids would have responded this way even if one of us adults had "helped" them with the clasps, but I tend to believe that the dolls' newfound popularity, something that endured into mid-week, had a lot to do with the kids' common struggle with those clasps: it's the struggle, especially the common struggle, that makes the reward so sweet.

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They Already Are Being Careful

Awhile back, I was watching a boy playing around under the swings as a classmate was swinging. It wasn't a particularly risky activity in my view. I mean, I was standing right there, taking pictures, discussing it with him, and it didn't set off any alarm bells for me in the moment, although after the fact, while going through the photos, it occurred to me that it was something that would be scuttled in other settings. My lack of concern probably stems from the fact that it's far from the first time this sort of thing has happened:

In fact, I think what caught my attention about it was that it was the first time I'd seen a kid do more than just lie there giggling. Of course, many schools have removed their swings altogether, so maybe the very existence of swings is shocking to some. 

I imagine that in some dystopian future we'll become notorious for being the only school left with a swing set, let alone for not having a set of rules about how the kids can use them. That's because, in our six years with swings, since our move to the Center of the Universe, we've not found a need for safety rules, because the kids, the ones that live in the world outside our catastrophic imaginations, haven't shown a particular propensity to hurt themselves or one another.

Oh sure they get hurt like all kids do, like all people, but most of the injuries don't come from what people call "risky play," but rather from day-to-day activities, things you would think children had mastered. For instance, the worst injury we've seen during my 16 year tenure at Woodland Park came when a boy fell on his chin while walking on a flat, dry, linoleum floor. He needed a couple stitches. Another boy wound up with stitches when he fell while walking in the sandpit. 

Increasingly, I find myself bristling when I hear folks talk about "risky play," even when it's framed positively. From my experience, this sort of play is objectively not risky, in the sense that those activities like swinging or climbing or playing with long sticks, those things that tend to wear the label of "risky" are more properly viewed as "safety play," because that's exactly what the kids are doing: practicing keeping themselves and others safe. It's almost as if they are engaging in their own, self-correcting safety drills.

When a group of four and five year olds load up the pallet swing with junk, then work together to wind it up higher and higher, then, on the count of three, let it go, ducking away as they do it, creating distance between themselves and this rapidly spinning flat of wood that they've learned is libel to release it's contents in random directions, they are practicing keeping themselves and others safe. They don't need adults there telling them to "be careful" or to impose rules based on our fears because those things are so manifestly necessary to this sort of thing that they are an unspoken part of the play.

When children pick up long sticks and start employing them as light sabers, swinging them at one another, they are practicing keeping themselves and others safe. The safety is built into it.

When children wrestle they are practicing caring for themselves and their friends.

When preschoolers are provided with carving tools and a pumpkin they automatically include their own safety and that of others into their play. Adult warnings to "be careful" are redundant at best and, at worst, become focal points for rebellion (which, in turn, can lead to truly risky behavior) or a sense that the world is full of unperceived dangers that only the all-knowing adults can see (which, in turn, can lead to the sort of unspecified anxiety we see so much of these days). Every time we say "be careful" we express, quite clearly, our lack of faith in our children's judgement, which too often becomes the foundation of self-doubt.

The truth is that they already are being careful. The instinct for self-preservation is quite strong in humans. It's a pity that we feel we must teach them to live within our catastrophic imaginations.

I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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