Recently I have seen a bunch of posts talking about the stages of play
I just want to put it out there that I am not a fan.
This is rooted in my own experience of play and observing my own children as well as the many hundreds I have worked with, and possibly thousands I have observed while in playgrounds schools and public spaces etc etc
What I notice is that children don't start with one particular stage of play and level up through them in a specific order at set times in their life, with social or cooperative play being the pinnacle - because life just isn't simple like that - it's delightfully complex.
My oldest children are twins and from within the womb to the day they were born and onwards they have played socially and cooperatively and it was absolutely amazing to watch - I am sure just about every twin mum will agree that play is often described from the norm of a singleton.
If a baby doesn't have a 24/7 peer then they are going to evolve differently from those that do... and I think it is problematic when play is constantly being described from such norms that then prevent play being truly noticed and understood.
Being privy to observing how autistic children evolve (my three, each in their own way) and with a knowledge of my own autistic childhood I can say that the play descriptions are neuronormative also - as unoccupied play, solitary play and parallel play are all vital for mental health - I would argue also for every human - and are not a sign of regressing, but a perfectly designed way to appropriately interact with the world at that moment in time.
My daughters learned solitary play at the same time or maybe after their cooperative play and definitely after parallel play (there was a lot of "we" and not much “I” in their early language days so I worked hard to ensure they had alone time with me as well, and not just be a twin thing). They actually had the ability to spread this cooperative play in the groups they were in at preschool - it was one of the things their teachers from 1-8yrs constantly mentioned at every development talk - how they had "infected" the group with social play in a way they had rarely seen before.
The scribble below is how I visualise it - we all have access to all these kinds of play and they are all equally valuable.
Because they all meet different needs at different times of our life - on an hourly, daily, weekly, yearly, lifely way of evolving. It’s not about taking away those descriptions of solitary play, parallel play etc because they are useful to talk about how children interact in their play. But I strongly believe they are not stages of play we go through, it's simply many different ways of socially engaging in play - and the chances are that every human does every one of them every single day
Which is why I dispute them as stages.
I think we need to learn whether or not a child is engaging in, for example, parallel play because they are too tired but want play company close by, or because they are too shy to play with the others, or because they lack the social skills to manage cooperative play or because they are being excluded or some other reason.
We need to take the time to notice what is actually going on - not only the play, but the social dynamics and the evolving cognitive, social, emotional and physical skills of each child.
I have found stages to be extremely detrimental - as it has led to many children (my youngest included) being seen with deficit lens and instead of allowing him/them to engage in brain appropriate play there has been a demand to train him/them to play at the "right" stage, in other words to fix him. This results in "breaking" children. Like forcing a child to run before they can stand, or write a story before they can hold a pen.
Before a child can run they have to play crawling, standing, cruising, falling, toddling - regardless of how old they are; no person would, in their right mind, demand a child who doesn't walk yet should run.
Yet this happens in social play all the time.
Expectations of how a child "should" behave based on their age rather than their brain maturity. A child needs to socially toddle before they can socially run - yet there is this constant pressure on adults (parents and educators alike) to ensure at certain ages a child has reached a certain stage. I think this is very much connected to the need to prepare children for the next stage in school too - and if we are always looking at the next step and preparing for the next “step”, we are not ensuring children master and understand the current step which they need to be able to push off onto the next one. (when I talk about steps I am not talking about levelling up - although I know that the current system does - taking steps should be in any direction that helps the child evolve and realise their full potential - upwards is not always helpful)
This is why I think it is important to talk about the different ways children engage in social play but NOT as a stage concept.
Instead of stages just different ways of engaging in social play to meet social and play needs. And every one of them is valuable
What we should be doing is helping each child to develop the skills they need to be able to engage in the play of their choice - and to support as wide a repertoire of play as possible for them to test and choose. Not ensure that they are engaging in social play - but supporting them so they can if they want to... and I think this makes a big difference
Sometimes we are too tired for social play but need company so parallel play works best. Sometimes we just need to fiddle with things without thinking - unoccupied play. Sometimes we just want to be on our own. And I think we all deserve to do this, regardless of age, without it being considered a problem or less valued that other ways of engaging in social play.
Sometimes we play to explore, or create or connect or... (I haven't included everything on the image above) and the scribble is there to remind us that it’s not a linear way of first one stage and then another, it is more messy, and we come back to the same way many multiple times - sometimes after a large arc, other times more quickly, and that it is OK to engage in some ways more than others.
This has been a part of my decolonising process - to pull apart the ages and stages of play AND learning - and to start thinking of them as more fluid with familiar patterns.
And there is more flexibility to choose the kind of play that feels right in the moment.
And less shame. Because if all ways of playing are valued there is no need to feel ashamed and want to hide ways of playing because others deem it “childish” - which I think is a utterly sad way of saying what children do is of less value, what young children do is not of importance, and what children do is something we should be ashamed of and distance ourselves.
Judging from how the world behaves, it ought to be the children being ashamed of adult behaviour.
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