Play Nice

We all have those moments of deep reflection about past events in our lives.

I have written before on how a sound, smell, touch or taste can transport us back to a specific moment, even if that memory has not been foremost in our mind for decades. I of course refer to happy and joyous reminiscences and not tragic or melancholy ones.

In my own life, whilst I may not be able to remember everything that I did yesterday, I can with clarity experience distinct sensations from early childhood. These invariably revolve around the fact that I was allowed to just play by my parents and amongst my four sisters and brothers.

The importance of play especially in the period of seven to eight months up to the age of five cannot be over-emphasised in the development of the brain and, as I discussed in yesterdays blog "PS I Love You", in establishing empathy with others.

I was perfectly happy in my pre-school years and could spend hour upon hour drawing a road network on a big sheet of brown paper on which to drive my toy cars or in the safety of my parents back garden making a landscape out of mud and twigs for warfare by mini 00 scale soldiers.

In group play as an under 10, I was part of a large neighbourhood gang, in the loosest non threatening form for a "gang", ranging about on bikes, on foot in formation like a Roman patrol or in crudely fashioned soap-box  carts. Play was a good thing and as children there was no right or wrong way to play. Empathy was the strongest outcome of the play and that meant that we all got on, well generally as much as competing kids can.

My own home environment permitted  play as it was a safe and loving place with doting parents and no real worries, or at least that we should be bothered with.

I grew up in momentous times with the threat of Nuclear conflict in the Cold War and although I knew about such things I was protected from the stress of worrying over it. My mother and father lived near an airbase in the 1960's with frequent take off and landing activity linked to some world crisis of other being a constant reminder of potential peril. Even in the 1980's I remember my mother having a letter published in a regional newspaper about the damage being done to young minds and aspirations because of the hype and panic arising from the distribution  of "Protect and Survive" or in layman's terms the leaflet in which the UK Government suggested what its citizens must do in the event of a nuclear attack.

We could as easily have become depressed by this impending nuclear holocaust but myself and my siblings were allowed to play. The opposite of play is not, as you may think, work but depression.

I have been fascinated by reading about a psychological project carried out in the 1960's where the subjects studied were imprisoned killers.

The first one interviewed , Charles Whitman, attained notoriety by carrying out sniper shootings at a US University which at that time was the largest mass killing of its type in that nation. His had been a violent childhood with abusive father, access to weapons and a bi-polar condition. Neighbours and those in the community who had known his family told the research team that they had never, ever seen the young Whitman engaging in free play. His father had beaten him for attempting to go out to play and had forced him to play piano at the age of 4. His tutors throughout his schooling saw him as a quiet and withdrawn student who had to be encouraged to play and participate with his peers.

In further unprecedented access to 26 jailed killers the research found a similarity in circumstances that had existed in their formative years to prevent play.

This lack of interaction meant that the social skill of empathy had not developed and with devastating consequences for the victims and perpetrators. It is now the consensus in medical science and psychology that a lack of play in those crucial formative years affects the development of the brain.

In the state of play the frontal lobe of the human brain somehow becomes unhooked and is unfettered in making associations with other parts of the brain in a glorious symphonic existence. There are benefits in  mood uplift, health and well-being and overall happiness.

Where animal brains have been studied in more detail the act of play has been seen to chemically light up the whole spectrum of functions in a riot of technicolour.

Play can also be an aid to survival in stressful situations.

A study of rats involved two control groups. One group was permitted to just behave in a typically inquisitive rat like manner whilst the other was suppressed and contained. When confronted with a cat odour soaked blanket the normal rats investigated and, sensing the danger, fled. They had obviously learned from their experience for another time. The restrained group just stayed where they were, none the wiser and died.

We should therefore, as adults, not overlook the importance of play and playfulness even though we may feel that our seniority, social standing and the respect from others depends on a certain expectation and standard of behaviour. We may feel that as humans we are too civilised to recognise our base instincts around play. Other mammals place a great emphasis on play as it allows the exploration of options, introduces novelty and newness, promotes thought and an ability to adapt and above all it is fun.

It is time to accept that we are designed to play over our lifetime so whatever your age, go and  find that frisbee, retrieve that bouncy ball, toe-poke that football , fire up the Play Station and get on with it,

(inspired by the TED Lecture on Play and the work of Stuart Brown)