As a mother of a 5-year-old daughter living in Queens, I often ask myself things that, in hindsight, seem pretty ridiculous. Some of these reflections include: “Is my daughter enrolled in the best public school in her school district?”; “Is she signed up for the right activities that are best-suited for her needs and abilities that will help her get into college?”; “Will she be able to handle the amount of homework she is assigned to in kindergarten when she starts this fall?”; and (this one really makes me laugh) “When she enters third grade, will she be prepared to take this New York State test I hear all the school administrators and teachers fretting about?”
I try to keep in perspective that my daughter is only 5-years-old and has done so much already in her short lifespan, in comparison to myself at the same age, that worrying about these things is almost irrelevant. When I was 5 years old, I didn’t have homework. I was zoned for only one public school and was automatically given a seat there. I took a dance class (though, to this day, I still have two left feet), and my parents had no clue about any of my school’s state tests.
In contrast to the rather innocent years of my own early childhood in the 1970s, the world where my daughter is growing up in now is a technology-driven, fast-paced lifestyle, where everyone is trying to anticipate what will happen next. Considering what I’m exposing my daughter to on a daily basis, I started to ask myself some honest questions, such as:
• “Am I allowing her to watch too much TV, or to spend too much time in front of a computer screen?”
• “Am I letting her eat too much junk food?”
• “Am I not giving her a chance to be a kid by inundating her with too many activities and too much information in my attempts to make her a well-rounded, intelligent child?”
Speaking to others in my Queens community about my concerns, I got some thoughtful responses from a lot of caring and reflective parents. I needed to remind myself that the New York City area is full of affluent, educated adults who all want what is best for their children, and sometimes in the whirlwind of our society, we often forget that our kids are just that — kids.
At the end of my research, I ended up being directed to the website of Alliance for Childhood, an organization which adheres to the idea of raising children through creative play in an environment that rebuffs the constant presence of technology, media, commercialization and school testing.
All of the materials posted to the website (which includes reports, publications, and the Alliance’s own position on certain issues) stress the importance of play being fundamentally important to a child’s growth. Through play, children learn about whole body movement, manipulating objects, using their imaginations, and engaging themselves in activities with other kids their ages. Play even helps children reduce stress.
Creative play is derived from educators’ definition of creativity as the ability to think up new ideas. They define play as an activity where children can create, imagine, and explore their environments — as opposed to a scheduled sports game or a dance class. By the first grade, children should be able to have mastered three different stages of play: solitary, parallel and cooperative.
This very first stage of play, called “solitary play,” is where children play independently. This is followed by “parallel play,” where two or more children are playing with toys alongside each other. When children reach ages 4 or 5, they should be emotionally- and socially-developed enough to engage in “cooperative play,” where they play with each other by communicating ideas or rules.
In the summer of 2010, William Crain, a psychology professor at the City College of New York, published a report stating that play is an inherent part of children’s growth — much like the need for animals to play when they are babies. Baby animals like to spontaneously scamper and jump around in the wild, which gives them an acrobatic balance with which to escape predators and handle footing in difficult terrain. Likewise, when children engage in creative play, they learn to problem-solve and feel empathy toward others, which will help them later in life, when they interact in the adult world.
The Alliance has posted to its website many articles about the importance that childhood play plays in fostering creativity in children, which will help them navigate through life’s problems as they grow into adults. One of my favorite articles is a Newsweek piece published in July 2010. Written by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, the article discusses a creativity test designed by Professor E. Paul Torrance, which was first conducted on a group of 400 Minneapolis children in 1958.
“What’s shocking is how incredibly well Torrance’s creativity index predicted those kids’ creative accomplishments as adults,” stated Bronson and Merryman in the article.
One of the highest scorers on the test was 8-year-old Ted Schwarzrock, who amazed scholars with his answers. Given a fire truck and asked how the toy could be improved, Schwarzrock gave 25 responses, such as “adding a removable ladder and springs to the wheels.” Fast forward 50 years, Schwarzrock is now independently wealthy, having founded and sold three medical-products companies.
“His innovations in health care have been wide-ranging, from a portable respiratory oxygen device to skin-absorbing anti-inflammatories to insights into how bacteria become antibiotic-resistant,” wrote Bronson and Merryman.
If Schwarzrock’s test results and life accomplishments are any indication, creative play in our children’s upbringing and education is a vital component to our country’s future. Since 1958, the Torrance test has been conducted in the United States on an annual basis. The creativity scores had been steadily rising until 1990, when these scores slowly began to decline.
Other countries have taken notice of these scores and have made concerted efforts to reverse this downward trend. In 2009, the European Union planned a European Year of Creativity and Innovation when conferences and experiential learning programs were conducted for both children and adults. Even the Chinese, long known for their drill-style teaching techniques, are also adopting a problem-based learning approach.
In comparison to the creativity programs of other countries, the U.S. government has been slow to respond. None of the publications on the website say anything positive about the No Child Left Behind Act, which the U.S. Congress overwhelmingly passed in 2001 in a well-intentioned attempt to fairly appropriate federal funding to public schools.
Personally, I have never heard any teacher, school administrator or child psychologist make a positive remark about this legislation, which they say essentially pressures teachers to have their students achieve high test scores so schools receive government aid.
As a result, public schools are spending inordinate amounts of time preparing children to take tests. Elementary school curriculums are now focused on teacher-led instruction, rote memorization, and test-taking, which leaves little time for recess or play. For their students to achieve higher test scores, teachers are now instructing children in kindergarten classrooms how to read and write, which many educators believe shouldn’t be taught until first grade.
Although the Alliance disapproves of the increasing lack of play in these curriculums, it doesn’t believe in chaotic classrooms. In its publication “Crises in Kindergarten,” Alliance advocates Edward Miller and Joan Almon write that ideal classrooms are either where students “explore the world through play with the active presence of teachers,” or involve “teacher guided learning with rich, experiential activities.”
After having read the material on the Alliance’s website, I have found that most of my worries about raising a 5-year-old can be assuaged just by adding some play time to her daily routine. When kids play creatively, they watch less television and spend less time in front of computer screens, which is known to decrease obesity rates. When children play outdoors they come in contact with nature and develop healthier attitudes toward food and their bodies.
While there are many advantages to exposing children to sports and the arts, the constant influx of classes and scheduled activities leaves children with little time to relax and enjoy the simple pleasures of being a child, such as playing in a sandbox with toys, filling up buckets of water from a sprinkler, or competing in a building block contest with a sibling or friend.
Thanks to the Alliance, I’ve learned that I’m lucky enough to give my daughter some free play time this summer (no camp, no family trips, no summer school) for her to indulge in her imagination and let her mind grow.
For more information about the Alliance for Childhood, you can visit its website at www.allianceforchildhood.org/home.
