Play, Talk, Support
The Role of Play Within the 3 Core Principles of Child Development.
The Harvard Centre on the Developing Child have just released a new video and paper that links the role of play in any setting with the 3 core principles to support child development.
The science of child development points to three core principles that can guide what society needs to do to help children and families thrive.
Support Responsive Relationships
Strengthen Core Life skills
Reduce Sources of Stress
Play is an effective way of supporting all three. We are at our happiest when we play.
Neuroscience has discovered that the experiences we have in early life shape our brains architecture, along with early nutrition and the environment, all get “under the skin” and influence lifelong learning, behaviour and health.
Responsive relationships are the most important factor in building sturdy brain architecture. A major active ingredient in this developmental process is the serve and return interaction between children and their parents, whanau or community. When an infant or child babbles, gestures or cries, and an adult responds appropriately with eye contact, words or a hug, neural connections are built and strengthened in the child’s brain. A simple game of peek a boo is a serve and return interaction.
When adults verbalise children’s play in responsive, taking turns conversations the child’s brain receives the message that this is a complex world and grows the brain structure needed to accommodate it.
Core Life Skills are the essential skills to manage life, work and relationships. They support our ability to focus, plan for and achieve goals, adapt to changing situations and resist impulse behaviours. These are developed over time with coaching and practice. Scientists call these executive function and self-regulation skills. The brain needs these skills to filter distractions, prioritise tasks and remember rules and goals, and control impulses. These skills are crucial for learning and development and set us up to make lifelong healthy choices.
Children in play practice all the core life skills: how to focus, plan for and achieve goals, adapt to changing situations and resist impulse behaviours. Children can move from peripheral participation, to showing an interest, toward involvement, persisting with difficulty, communicating ideas and finally negotiating and structuring participation, all in one game of hide and seek!
Reduce the Sources of Stress. Excessive activation of stress response systems affects the brain in many ways. When we feel threatened, our body prepares us to respond by increasing our heart rate, blood pressure and stress hormones such as cortisol. Constant stress depletes precious energy the brain needs for healthy development in childhood and adulthood. However, when these response systems are activated within an environment of supportive relationships the physiological symptoms are moderated and brought back down to base level. Chaotic, threatening, and unpredictable situations and environments that activate the “fight and flight” response repeatedly or excessively can make it difficult to engage executive function skills that we need to plan, focus, adjust, and resist impulsive behaviours.
Calm, predictable, consistent environments with the presence of supportive adults, when things go wrong, are a healthy way for children to practice core life skills.
In short: Play, talk, and support.
Responsive, back and forth, conversations during play with your child builds their brain for complexity. When you reduce sources of stress and offer children play in consistent, calm predictable environments, you promote healthy brain development. Finally, as you value and support their play, you strengthen core life skills, so your children, and your family, thrive.
Edited by Jo Clark, from The Harvard Centre for the Developing Child Newsletter: August 2019