NPR, Child’s Play, and the Importance of the Imagination
[by Owen Strachan]
A friend recently tipped me off to a great NPR article on the importance of child’s play. Here’s a key quotation on how child’s play has changed in the last half-century:
“Instead of spending their time in autonomous shifting make-believe, children were supplied with ever more specific toys for play and predetermined scripts. Essentially, instead of playing pirate with a tree branch they played Star Wars with a toy light saber. Chudacoff calls this the commercialization and co-optation of child’s play — a trend which begins to shrink the size of children’s imaginative space.”
Aside from the clearly unfortunate nature of this development from an “enriched life” standpoint, the loss of imaginative, undirected play has had quantifiably negative effects in the physiology of children. Here’s a very telling quotation:
“A recent study replicated a study of self-regulation first done in the late 1940s, in which psychological researchers asked kids ages 3, 5 and 7 to do a number of exercises. One of those exercises included standing perfectly still without moving. The 3-year-olds couldn’t stand still at all, the 5-year-olds could do it for about three minutes, and the 7-year-olds could stand pretty much as long as the researchers asked. In 2001, researchers repeated this experiment. But, psychologist Elena Bodrova at the National Institute for Early Education Research says, the results were very different.
“Today’s 5-year-olds were acting at the level of 3-year-olds 60 years ago, and today’s 7-year-olds were barely approaching the level of a 5-year-old 60 years ago,” Bodrova explains. “So the results were very sad.”"
The loss of self-regulation is, perhaps surprisingly, intimately connected with the loss of spontaneous, child-directed play that nurtures the imagination. Thus, when one loses a connection with the imagination, and when one couples this loss with a permissive society, one is left with a generation of children who have little self-control and a host of corresponding personal problems. What, after all, is more integral to maturity than self-control?
I would encourage you to read the whole article–it’s worth it, as it will stimulate much thought among Christians. If the studies mentioned in the piece are true, and they certainly seem to be, then we Christians will need to make sure that we reserve a substantial place in our child-raising for the cultivation of the imagination. Furthermore, we will need to make sure that we do so not primarily by placing toys with preprogrammed stories in the hands of our children, but by thrusting our children out the back door with the lively admonition to, well, “Play!” That is to say, articles like the one cited in this post only encourage us to do what many parents, following their common sense intuition, have been doing for many hundreds of years: encouraging kids to be kids. This is not to say that such parents do not push their children on to maturity and seek to develop them in spiritual and social terms such that they become God-fearing men and women capable of contributing to home, church, society, and the broader kingdom. No, they do. But good parents do so while realizing that the seasons of life are precious and that a key part of the season of childhood is the development and exercise of the imagination.
I am not yet a father. I cannot wait to be (and my wife, praise God, is fourteen weeks along!). I do not speak, then, as an authority, but as one who was blessed to be raised in a home where the imagination was not simply tolerated but was stimulated and allowed to develop. To this day, one of my favorite things to do is to engage in creative exercise through basketball games. I may not invent tales of knightly heroism or dashing rescue anymore, but I do still allow my fun side to run wild, quite literally, on the court. That’s a gift that my parents gave me–and that I hope many Christian parents will continue to give in days to come. What’s at stake, after all, is not simply well-rounded children, but children who understand and delight in the gift of imagination and then go on to live self-controlled lives while glorying in the message of the Bible, the story that in its incredible genesis, action-packed body, and fantastic resolution crests all other tales in majesty and truth.
Tags: Imagination, NPR, Parenting
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February 27, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Timmy,
Unrelated topic- #1 is swiftly approaching at Mars Hill Church. Any plans for a listening party once the sermon is published online?
Aaron
February 27, 2008 at 5:50 pm
[Owen - my apologies]
Aaron,
I am not sure when it will be posted online. I will be looking for it, though. Perhaps I could blog on it next week. I might open up a thread to offer anyone an opportunity to respond to Driscoll’s treatment of my question. If I do, it will be after Tuesday though.
[/Owen - my apologies]
February 27, 2008 at 10:58 pm
Timmy,
Have you watched any of his other answers. The last one gave a good insight onto how they rationalize doing church the way that they do. I seem to disagree with there take on Acts 17 (which is what he talks about at the end of his sermon). It seems that they do their church like Paul did his planting of churches. Doesn’t this seem like a totally different thing?
In Christ
Joe Hussung
February 28, 2008 at 4:33 am
Joe,
I would be happy to address your questions, but out of respect for Owen and his contributions to my blog, I will not do it here.
February 28, 2008 at 4:44 am
To all,
When it comes to comments on this blog, you will see that I administrate the comments fairly loosely. In other words, I do not censure or moderate comments unless flagrant, offensive, slanderous, or just some sort of spam. The only other kind of comment I do not allow are “drive-by’s” or trolls who are either try to hijack a post or stir up a hornets nest.
Having said that, something that I do consider important to remember is to stay on topic. If you have a comment or question not specifically geared to the author’s post or the topic at hand, please do the courtesy and blog etiquette of emailing me off line with your questions or comments, and I would be happy to address them there. My email address can be found on the “Essentials” page.
Over the last couple of years that I have been reading Owen’s writings and getting to know him in person, He is a first-rate thinker with very substantive and challenging articles. I asked him to join me here for several reasons, not the least of which I know his contributions will make this blog better and provide more balance to the blog content. Let me encourage you to consider the insightful and important contributions of my brother and now partner in this blog and interact with his material.
In the future, whatever concerns, comments, or questions you may have that are not directly related to the blog will be moderated. I will contact you via email if it is necessary and respond in such a manner so as to preserve the integrity of the discussion and respect the author’s contribution (whether it be me or someone else).
Thanks for hearing me out on this, and I look forward to more fruitful, open, and engaging discussion in the future.
Timmy B.
February 28, 2008 at 5:38 am
Hi Owen!
As a homeschooling mom of 7, I really enjoyed this article. I have always felt this way—–children should have ample time to play and use their imagination. During our early years of parenting, we tried to ban ‘guns’ from our young boys—-and low and behold a piece of cheese would be bitten into the shape of a gun to help dramatize the heroic tales they would be telling their siblings sitting around the table listening.
Charlotte Mason a British educator has some very interesting articles in the education of children. We have thoroughly enjoyed her thoughts and have adapted some of her ideas for the raising of our children. It is quite sad indeed when you think of what we allow now and what was not tolerated from children then. It’s no wonder why we are raising a generation suffering from the ‘Peter Pan’ complex.
By the way, congratulations on your baby. I am sure the extension of your family will bring great joy into your lives. Children are indeed a gift of the Lord! Enjoy this time with your wife—-it only gets better!
Thank you for your contribution to P&P! I look forward to reading more from you.
February 28, 2008 at 9:44 am
Owen,
my apologies. I am fairly new to the blogging world and I didn’t mean to hijack your blog on an unrelated issue.
again my apologies.
In Christ
Joe hussung
February 29, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Joe,
No problem. I just want to be considerate and give due respect to the author’s post as the administrator of this blog. Thank you for your understanding.
Grace and peace,
Timmy
March 3, 2008 at 4:23 pm
I also wish to offer my apologies to Owen. Fantastic info, and something I am interested in as I have a 10 month old little girl. I would have emailed Timmy directly, but did not see a link to do so. I’ll watch my p’s and q’s more closely in the future.
Joyfully His,
Aaron Campbell