It’s got to stop.
This ‘leveraging play’ approach to classroom management and parenting. This well-intended albeit futile attempt at behavior modification through the threat of the ultimate loss (next to death and taxes)…
It’s our birthright to play.
It’s in our DNA.
It’s how we learn.
It’s how we connect.
It’s how we heal.
It’s not only our right, but our rite. Of passage. Of development. Of humanity.
It can change our chemistry. In a matter of minutes.
It can mend broken fences, reunite so-called enemies, scrub out judgment and blame.
It’s. that. powerful.
Imagine, now, holding that close to our chest like a wild card, a clipboard, a shield… keeping it from a child unless he _________.
It doesn’t matter what he’s not doing, what he shouldn’t be doing, what we want him to do or stop doing, or any other variation on the theme of behavior, children and the adults who care about them.
Play ought to be a non-negotiable. Sacred. Like love.
We don’t dare say, “Do your homework or no love for you.”
We wouldn’t say, “Don’t talk to me like that or you don’t get love for the next week.”
We don’t say, “If you don’t sit still and stop talking in class, you won’t be able to have love today.”
Play is love.
It is. That’s hard science. They both light up the same part of the brain. Play releases the same hormones and neurotransmitters in our bodies and brains.
Here’s the irony…
We can’t stop play from happening inside us. Sure, we can control other people’s behaviors through fear and threats, but it’s short-sighted and kind of falsely omnipotent of us to think we can stop a hormone from being produced in a human brain. Stop brain juice from flowing with the palm of our firm hand.
NO HAPPY HORMONE FOR YOU!
NO SEROTONIN AND EXCITATORY SYNAPTIC ACTIVITY!
OK, so why do we do this?
We do this *sigh* because I think we, on some level, some primal, longing, innocent, nostalgic, envious level, we know how powerful and inspiring and motivating and rejuvenating and beautiful play is for a human being. For a child. And I suspect it terrifies us to let it be. To let it do what it came here to do. Grow us. Heal us. Coax our minds out of hiding and unlock the floodgates of joy and belonging.
Holy Hopscotch! That can be downright threatening to adults…for those grown-ups who were denied that right, who lost their own inner GPS of joy through a painful play deficit that was not intended but was the unfortunate outcome of play leveraging.
Bargain something else. Arrange plans with other mechanics of trust and negotiation. Teach kind lessons via other pathways. Build good boundaries that can flex with our shared imperfection. Give and take other commodities that suit the context, that don’t squander the other person’s sense of dignity or significance.
But, don’t, for PLAY’s sake, leverage play! For the sake of furthering the species, for the sake of our children who will have nearly every other aspect of their childhood scrutinized, marginalized, diminished, pressurized, tested, traded and upgraded for older models….
Please, don’t leverage play.
That’s the heart of your child. Preserve it.
It’s your heart too. Want to know something kind of extraordinary? If we can be bold and courageous enough to defend our child’s “multi-purpose” need for play, and we pay really good, close attention to that process in our child…we will find our own buried joy and need for play get reawakened, reignited. And it will offer us all the same benefits as it gives our child.
That’s when that “behavior” you wanted to change through withholding play will disappear.
Yeah, play does that, too.
Lu Hanessian c 2012