What Children Can Teach Us About Play

What Children Can Teach Us About Play

By Bart Sharp

As adults we often have a different perspective than children do with the world of play.  We adults use play as forms of exercise, sports, competition, self-improvement and the most popular stress relief.     In the strategy of play as stress relief we have fun and/or are entertained as a way to escape our adult world.  It also serves us in that we adjust out of the tensions that our body is locked in to soothe us, relax.  It creates excitement within us that is energizing.  We need to play.

There is much that adults can expand upon in the ways a child plays.  Children play in a more creative way.  They are open to experience playful fun in a wider variety of ways.  They relish it.  A child has a more concentric point of view towards play in that they do it in 360 degree perspective where as adults lean to a more linear perspective, “I play when I bicycle and meet-up with my friends.  When I work I only work.”

A normal child can find play in almost any situation.  They crave it and intrinsically know that it is very important.

What we can learn from children is how creativity is an integral part of play.  It is an important vehicle to explore, imagine, build and be sensual.  We forget the creative side of play by doing things like painting, photography, building a decorative garden or writing a story for pleasure.  It ignites something inside of us that turns us on to living.  When we are turned on in such ways we become more opened, curious and less predictable.

How many adults do you know that do not play well are frightfully boring?   How many adults do not seek play intrinsically but wish to be entertained?  We often misidentify that we need to seek entertainment outside of us instead of activating our creativity within and as a result our selves to find something better than entertainment, joyful satisfaction.

Sometimes it feels good to do sensual playful things, to simply rub our bare feet on the warm earth.  Walk in the rain or snow. Sensuality is an important part of play.  How many adults would relish walking barefoot in the mud and enjoy the squishy sensations between out toes.  Yet if we had that attitude would lovemaking be different.

As adults we would be more whole persons if we sought play and relaxation too not only fulfill our adult needs but the child within us as well.