From the Academy for Coaching Parents International - a great article on Childhood Development:
Imagination is a potent ingredient that we as busy parents often dismiss and brush aside as mere childhood play. But imagination is a critical component to learning — one that serves as the foundation for a host of necessary life skills. Self-dialog is a component of imaginative play that helps children learn to overcome obstacles and master the art of self-regulation. Unstructured imaginative play also serves to round out a child’s whole-person development. Recent studies indicate that imaginative play has changed drastically in the past 60 years, and that children’s overall development is suffering because of it. One study conducted in 2001 intended to compare results to a similar study from the late 1940’s. Its goal was to test children’s capacity for self-regulation.
In the 1940’s study, the researches tested children ages 3, 5 and 7 by asking them to stand perfectly still without moving. The 3-year-olds could not stand still at all, the 5-year olds could for about three minutes, and the most of the 7-year-olds could stand still for as long as the researchers asked. Compare this to the astonishing results from the 2001 study at the Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning, where the 5-year-olds could only stand for a duration equal to that of the previous level of 3-year olds. More tellingly, the 7-year-olds of today were barely approaching the level of 5-year-olds from over a half century ago. Psychologist Elena Bodrova commented, “The results were very sad.”
Why is imaginative play such a critical component in developing self-regulation? During periods of make-believe and pretend, children engage in self-dialog – a life skill that helps empower them to learn to overcome obstacles, master cognitive and social skills and manage their emotions. It is during this period of self-dialog or private speech, that children decide on desired objectives and then strategize ways to accomplish those feats. Self-dialog is also a tool that many adults still utilize when faced with challenges or problems. By talking things through, we’re able to process situations, analyze them and design solutions for them.
Studies also show that creative and imaginative play can aid in other areas of development such as memory, attitude, planning, attention and creativity, as well as help children expand and hone their language and communication skills.
A key change that many scientists are concerned with is the fact that until the advent of television, childhood play revolved around some type of activity, vs. today’s usual object-centric type of play. Before television, children utilized everyday objects to create scenarios and to imagine a world of their own. If a boy found a stick, it was not merely a stick — it had the capacity to become a knight’s sword, a fishing pole, or a Native-American spear.
Today’s product commercialization has removed the realm of limitless possibilities, and now tends to pigeonhole children into a pre-conceived situation such Darth Vader’s Lightsaber, where the intent of the object is already clear and denies the child a chance to find a creative purpose for the object.
Check back next week for the continuation of this article…
