I was listening to a piece on the radio about the power of play in the lives of young children- unstructured play, not adult directed games with rules, winners, losers and only one ways of doing things. As carefully as we manage their day in the classroom itself, we have extended that control to social life as well. We tell them exactly what to do, when, where and how. There are rules about sitting on slides, playing on ice, picking teams, who can play on which fields, how to swing and rules stating that no one can knock down the snowmen or snow forts of others.
We are managing kids to the point where they are told everything, except maybe to figure it out themselves. The usual answer when children are asked what to do if someone hurts your feelings, for example, is “Go tell a teacher.“ Kids go running to teachers on the playground whining and tattling about every little thing and we snap into action instead of looking them in the face and asking, “So what did you do when that happened? What could you have done? What can you do? How can you handle that?“ Chances are the kids have tried nothing. Maybe that explains the large numbers of twenty-five year olds still living with their parents, asking mom if she washed and ironed their clothes yet.
There are very few things kids need us for during their play or recreation time, but they‘re too polite and scared to tell us to butt out. Of course, we have to keep them safe but solving all their problems does nothing to help them further down the line. If they go down a slide face first, a mouth full of dirt is a tough but effective teacher and rather appropriate metaphor might I add. Kids have to learn to stand up for themselves, ignore hotheads, resist manipulation and learn what real friends are. They have to acquire the skills of negotiation, retreat and sympathizing. They have to practice acting on their feelings of wanting to join in or get out. They have to learn how to take teasing and joking, being the last one picked sometimes and figuring out if they can’t handle losing, they just shouldn’t play the game. They need to realize that if they act like jerks, they’ll probably be yelled at, ignored or isolated because that’s life.
We shouldn’t be micromanaging every interaction between kids at play so no one is ever sad or angry or put out about something. They need to feel the spectrum of human emotions that make us what we are. They need to want to punch someone but can’t, say something but don’t and cry but keep it in. This will come in handy…
if they ever run for president.
