Right To Play

Playing is a way for children to cope with anxiety.

I asked a group of primary school-age children to jot down their ideas on what their rights are. They all agreed that they had the right to live, be loved and be protected. One thing they left out in their list was the right to play. When I asked them whether they felt they had the right to play, many of them felt that the adults in their lives controlled this.

Play allows children to learn to manage their anxiety. When children play, they are in a safe space where they can experiment at will. All rules are suspended and they are not bound by any physical or social constraint. In play, children can go their own way. A child at play makes her own decisions instead of following what others say. When children play, they can set aside what is going on in their lives.

Play helps children come to grips with their past and also, just as importantly, to build their future with a sense of a happy ending.

Play is active. Children do not have to be passive observers or suffer what is happening around them. They can actively participate in whatever is happening around them. For many young children who are living in silence, they can speak up without fear.

Play is the way a child works out his problems. As adults, we are constantly talking things out with one another. We talk about our past experiences and how they affect our present. We try to understand what is going on in our lives by pondering the possibilities and making connections.
When children play, they act out what they have heard or seen. They use their own words and actions to respond to what is going on around them. Their play actions help to relieve the anxiety they feel about what has happened. Through their make-believe sessions, children find the strength to cope with the challenges.

A 2½-year-old girl feeds her teddy bear food. She tells him, “Eat up. You cannot grow if you do not eat.” She keeps shoving the spoon with her pretend food into his tightly sewed up “mouth”. She gets angry with him and hits him. Then she picks him up and cuddles him, repeatedly saying, “I’m sorry.”

Play allows the child to test-drive their ideas before they use them to cope in real situations. I remember when my girls first started preschool, they often played pretend school with one another. I could tell how they perceived school as I watched and listened to them. One time, I was alerted that one of their teachers was using the cane in the classroom when I saw my daughter using a long stick. She kept telling her “class” to sit down and be quiet.

Play helps children come to grips with their past and also, just as importantly, to build their future with a sense of a happy ending. Children need to play out their fears after undergoing difficult situations, such as illness, family squabbles and adversities. During times of uncertainty, children use their play situations to give themselves some comfort and guidance.

Humour is also a powerful tool in managing anxiety, and children delight in their growing capacity to make use of it. They start to experiment with practical jokes from an early age. Children would do something funny or make up funny words to fend off their vulnerabilities or the boundaries set by their parents.

My second daughter would make up a language to communicate with us whenever she felt uneasy or reluctant to co-operate. She would either tell a joke or make a remark that no one understands. She would also say something really outrageous when things get a bit tense. She told us that this was her way of refraining from a fight or argument with us.

Children learn to adapt to many situations that are tense or aggravate them to feeling anxious, for example, when they have to attend a new class or on a visit to the doctor’s. Young children who engage in varied play situations with their siblings and peers will discover that things are not so bad after all. Having enacted the situation in their play, children feel they have better control over things.

Parents can help their children to play out how they feel about a particular situation. To do so, they have to give them space without structuring their play with adult rules. Let them say the words they choose. There is no right or wrong in play. Let the child lead. Parents need to respect that children will play and work out their problems at their own pace and in their own time. It is the child’s right to play.

By Ruth Liew