Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold.” -Joseph Chilton Pearce

Author: Austin Stanfel

One of the best things in life is play! And playing isn’t only for children. For adults, playing every now and then is needed to relieve stress. As for the kids, they can spend hours and hours of the day just playing; it is not just fun and games, because playing actually promotes healthy child growth. Studies show that playing helps children develop motor skills, use their creativity and imagination, and develops physical, emotional, and cognitive strength. Play allows children to discover the world around them, giving them the tools needed to thrive as they grow.

Plus, if playing is good enough for the experts as per our favorite quotes used below, then it sure is good enough for us! Psychologist Dr Peter Gray said it plain and simple, “If we love our children and want them to thrive, we must allow them more time and opportunity to play, not less. Yet, policymakers and powerful philanthropists are continuing to push us in the opposite direction — toward more schooling, more testing, more adult supervision of children, and less opportunity for free play.”/p>

Brain research and studies also boast about the benefits of playing as a writer, and author Tina Bruce mentions, “It is becoming increasingly clear through research on the brain, as well as in other areas of study, that childhood needs play. Play acts as a forward feed mechanism into courageous, creative, rigorous thinking in adulthood.”

Therefore, spending time in the classroom is important, but spending time playing is equally as important, as Leo F Buscaglia once said, “ It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them.” For it is with playing that children can learn new things; if anything is made into a game, it becomes easier for children to pick it up, for it was Diane Ackerman who said, “Play is our brain’s favourite way of learning.”

Playing also helps children develop their creativity: a tool that they will need even as adults, for creativity helps us solve problems, decorate life, and most importantly, just create! As Abraham Maslow says, “Almost all creativity involves purposeful play.”

So let us always choose to celebrate playing and highlight its importance, for it could lead children to new discoveries, new ideas that could be groundbreaking! For it was the famed Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung who said, “The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct.”

To end, we leave you with two light and fun quotes about how beautiful play is and how it helps us feel alive,
““We are never more fully alive, more completely ourselves, or more deeply engrossed in anything than when we are playing” Charles Schaefer and one of the best writers of our time. Ralph Waldo Emerson, on ther other hand, claims that our key to happiness is knowing how to play, “ It is a happy talent to know how to play”, and we couldn’t agree more.