WHEN the word “play” comes to mind, we, more often than not, think that it is something not to be taken seriously; and that it can be put aside and attended to at a later time after all the “serious” stuff has been successfully accomplished. It is something that we associate in the context of kids’ usual activities of frolicking and making senseless amusement. Since adults like most of us are expected to act in a more mature and responsible way, we are also expected to disengage in any kind of “play”. Oxford Dictionary pretty sums up this contention and defines the word as a verb which means to “engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose.”
In fact, in the Filipino context, we have the idiomatic phrase “nakikipaglaro sa apoy” which means being unfaithful to a spouse. Moreover, we regard the simple act of “paglalaro” as an activity which seems to have no bearing or importance at all. Play, therefore, typically connotes negative meanings and pertains to either an illicit activity or an attitude of pettiness, childishness, and even pointlessness. Following the latter subtext, adults are expected to act more seriously and stop playing. In other words, “adulting” has prevented us from playing. So the questions now are, should adults like us should really stop playing? Is there any way we can take play seriously?
I am fortunate enough to know the answers to these questions after I participated in a Media Training Workshop conducted by Probe Media Foundation and Unilab Foundation entitled "Taking Play Seriously: Telling Stories on Play for Child Wellness and Resilience" last September 24. In this forum, medical experts and advocates tackled the importance of upholding the children’s right to play, the various types of therapeutic play for children and how this can help improve children’s wellness and resilience, and the global standards on how media should interact and deal with children when covering their stories.
The emergence of the concept of therapeutic play especially for children should gain our wide interest and attention. Little did most of us know that play can be a form of therapy, and it has a lot of benefits and positive impacts especially for children in stressful or traumatic situations, or those with special needs as well. In this concept, play is seen as a spontaneous and active process in which thinking, feeling, and doing can flourish. Play involves all aspects of the child’s development-intellectual, physical, moral, social, and emotional. Play is not just important for the child’s healthy and total development. Rather, it is an essential tool to help achieve the child’s over-all well-being.
Play therapy, defined in the book entitled “The Magic of Play: Children Heal Through Play Therapy” written by one of the foremost experts in Child Psychology in the Philippines, Maria Lourdes Arellano- Carandang, “is an intervention where the child’s natural means of expression, play, is employed as a therapeutic tool to assist the child in coping with personal difficulties or trauma.” This is one of the best strategies to battle the increasing number of children and teens having mental health problems, with some of these cases ending up in worst incidents of suicides.
Play therapy, also known as therapeutic play, comes in many forms. Children can be involved creative play and expressive arts therapy such as drawing, painting, poetry, writing, drama or role playing, clay molding, and movement from dance or sports.
The many therapeutic factors in therapy such as release or catharsis, wish fulfillment, sense of power, experience of self-worth, sense of compliance, and acceptance of life’s realities highly benefit patients and children. Child psychologist Carandang furthers that play “is an antidote to helplessness and depression because it is empowering [and] playing gives the glorious sensation of autonomy, of freedom.”
With this high sense of empowerment and satisfaction derived from playing, Carandang highlights the need to play not just for the young children but also for us adults. Hence, while we consider ourselves as mature, sensible, and dignified grown-ups, we must continue playing to keep us sane and more importantly, happy human beings. Irish playwright and George Bernard Shaw says, “We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”