In J.M. Barrie's classic stage play, Peter Pan, the Darling children embark on an adventure with Peter, a puckish young boy who refuses to grow old.  In the magical world of Never Land, they meet fairies, battle pirates, and encounter mystical creatures.  The tale, which has inspired many youngsters for generations to play similar games, seems to hint that one can remain young at heart forever by indulging in the wonders of imagination.

Nearly all children enjoy getting lost in fantastical worlds.  But why they use their imagination so much is a question that has puzzled scientists who study human behavior for decades.  In the early 20th century, psychologists suspected that imaginative activities were frivolous and fun, but without any real purpose.  Kids, they reasoned, would need to leave fantasy behind in order to fully develop into mature thinkers.  More recently, a different viewpoint has emerged.   Play is now seen as crucially important for children's development.  When kids play, for instance, they can reenact events that scared or confused them as a way of making sense of these experiences.  Advocates for free play argue that unstructured time for imaginative activities can help children be happier, more creative and more social.

For many years, psychologists assumed play helped children test-drive real situations.  Pretending to be a doctor, for example, might be useful for learning information about the body or health care.  Recent research suggests that fantasy play can also be a powerful influence over learning.  Psychologists are finding that unrealistic situations can be surprisingly good for helping children learn.  Fantasies can help children learn but do not explain why an unusual context would be better than a realistic one in helping kids acquire real-world knowledge.  When something extraordinary is happening in a story or game, children may pay closer attention.  This not only adds to the appeal of an activity, such as make-believe, it can also help children learn more from a given situation.  

We have long underestimated the power of a child's flight of fancy.  There could be educational contexts that are particularly ripe for this fantasy advantage.  Much of physics, for instance, relies on testing the natural world's limits.  Children are often captivated by an object's ability to seemingly defy gravity.  Reality is often unintuitive, forcing scientists to grapple with unlikely possibilities for how the world works.  Fictional worlds that bear less resemblance to reality may help throw reality into sharper view, making it easier for children to understand and hence learn new information.

Parents and teachers can encourage children's engagement with fantasy.  If fantastical elements are especially helpful to learning, as the current research is finding, it would encourage children's fantasy-based play and provide them with stories that deliberately break the laws of reality.  Thinking about unrealistic possibilities can help create informative contrasts with how reality does and does not work.  Children's attraction to superheroes, dragons, and wizards offer perfect opportunities to ask young learners, "Could dragons be real?" or "What would happen if you could become invisible?"  

With school ending in the Bay Area this week, I have been asked by several parents for ideas of what to do with their children over the summer vacation.  So enjoy the freedom of summer with some of these fun activities in the Bay Area:

101 Things To Do with Kids in the Bay Area

50 Things to Do with Kids

Best of the Peninsula

Best Cheap Activities with Kids on the Peninsula

I hope you and your child have a fun, playful summer enjoying the Bay Area!

A six year-old boy received a surprise gift from his father.  Can you believe it was car? Yes, a car!  His father decided not to re-register his second car. Rather than selling it, he parked it in a corner of their big backyard, removed the fuel tank, secured the car so it could not roll away, and then handed his son the keys.  That year, the six year-old drove his mother from Sydney to Melbourne, then to Brisbane, and across Australia time and again. He drove his dad to the beach, to the mountains, and even to New Zealand! Each trip only took around ten minutes, but those trips created lasting memories for an imaginative boy and his parents.

Play is all about exploration, imagination, and wonder. Play is about spontaneity, discovery, and creativity.  Being able to play, for children, teenagers, and adults is a lifelong skills that builds and satisfies curiosity, broadens our way of thinking, reduces stress, invigorates imagination, and boosts energy levels.

Play is not just for kids. Adults, and especially parents, benefit from play as much as children, if not more. Children and adults need to learn the skill of play.

How play aids a child’s development

Play allows children to use their creativity while developing their imagination, dexterity, and physical, cognitive, and emotional strength.  It allows children to explore the world, practice adult roles, and gain confidence. And it improves children's social skills as well, by helping them to learn how to work in groups, to share, to negotiate, to resolve conflicts, and to learn self-advocacy skills.

Play helps with communication

Play provides opportunities for children to develop speech and language abilities and to practice listening.  Whether their play is companion-based with a sibling, peer, parent, or therapist, or solo play using imagination, children talk and listen while playing. It can be exciting to hear your child sitting in the family room interacting with toys and hearing her play one character, then another, as the toys interact. It can be invigorating to watch your son dress up as a superhero and save the bath toys from the evil emperor. It was meaningful for a mother to sit in a beat-up old car and listen as her son drove her around Australia.

Play helps with relationships

Play promotes social interaction, social skills, and competence. Children who play learn how relationships work through their play experiences. The number of friendships and the quality of their friendships will also usually increase as play becomes more prevalent.

Play boosts cognitive development

Imaginative play and role-playing are particularly powerful kinds of play that help the brain develop in more functional and positive ways. Children who engage in these kinds of play have a more sophisticated level of interaction with others and with their environment than those who do not. This is particularly evident in studies of children who watch high levels of television in comparison to children who spend more time playing.

Research has shown that:

• Children whose dads played with them were found to have greater levels of imagination and cognitive ability compared to kids whose dads were non-players.
• Children whose mons played with them experienced more secure attachment to their moms, and enjoyed more positive development when compared to children whose moms were unavailable for play.
• Older children who played with their parents were also more engaged in other activities, experienced positive school engagement, had positive mental health, had stronger friendships, and enjoyed greater family closeness compared with older children without playful parents.

How Play Benefits Parents

So how do parents benefit from this? After all, parents are the ones who are juggling the needs of the children with the demands of being "the responsible adult" who doesn’t actually have time for play.

It can be really hard to enjoy it. Lots of parents feel like it’s no fun to play at all. Dress-ups, dolls, swordfights, Pokemon, littlest pet-shops, and bouncing on the trampoline may not be your idea of good fun. But parents who play get big boosts in their self-esteem, and most importantly, significant increases in their relationship satisfaction.  This goes for both playing with their children, and also being playful with other adults, particularly spouses.