Play | Newsletter 3
In this recent season of my counseling journey, I have had some opportunities come up that have allowed me to work with a much younger demographic. When I was in grad school, they teach you all these skills and theories, big words to use, and ways to help people benefit from talk therapy. All of that went out the window when I met with a 3 year old client who just wanted to dump every toy in the room into the sandbox. All I could think was “What have I gotten myself into.”
As I began reading and studying, trying to get a grasp on what in the world to do with children in a therapy setting, one word came up over and over again. Play. This word was everywhere but was also hard to find a definition. Stuart Brown in his book Play writes about the word play not having a strict definition but having some foundational pillars for what play is. Those pillars are as follows: play has an apparent purposelessness to it, it is voluntary, it has an inherent action, it provides a freedom from time, it diminishes the consciousness of the self, it has improvisational potential, and there is a desire to continue. This would become my guiding compass for how to interact with children in the counseling room, but I also felt the pull to explore where it fits into the rest of the world.
Play is important, not just for children, but for everyone. Playing provides us a space “outside” of the real world where there is not a pressure to gain anything from playing, it is just for fun. “Why would I do anything just for fun? What good does that do?” are questions I have come across and even asked myself. In a world where we are always moving and making tweaks to our lives to improve them in hopes for a better outcome, play does not seem to have a place in that equation. But it needs to. Play provides a safety to us in knowing there is no expectation to gain something out of this other than enjoyment. Play allows us to explore other potential outcomes and experiences from the safety of knowing that it’s just a game. Gabor Maté says “Human beings are either in defensive mode or in growth mode, but they cannot be in both at the same time”. We need play to bring us back to growth mode and pull us out of the defensive mode we so often live in.
Find a way to play this week. Play with your kids, play with your spouse, play with your friends, play with your pets, just play!
