The importance of play in childhood and adulthood

Play is an action that allows us to advance, learn and communicate with others.

"The human only plays when he is free in the full sense of the word and is only fully human when he plays." -Friedrich Von Schiller

Do you remember the last time you played for the sheer pleasure of playing?

Often, we relate play as something exclusive to childhood and only relevant to that stage of life. But, in addition, lately we find that even children do not have time to play.

Play goes far beyond an activity with educational and pedagogical value that entertains the little ones or entertains adult moments. Play is part of the list of evolutionary milestones that we must reach throughout our development, such as, for example, the developmental milestone that we must reach during our childhood.for example, the milestone of learning to walk.

Let's look at chimpanzees, dolphins, dogs, lions, among many other animals, they play until they grow old and die. Therefore, playing transcends culture, playing is necessary for development and we should never stop doing it, in the same way that we do not stop eating, walking or talking.

Play and expression

Playing we express ourselves and give freedom to our body and our mind. The game is a machinery of realization that with the passage of the years we are atrophying.

We will call "machinery of realization" to the game, because it allows us to see ourselves, to know ourselves, to explore ourselves, it allows us to realize ourselves, to be freer and to develop and to discover all our potential. If we atrophy all this, we are reduced to being more manipulable people, disconnected from ourselves, from our body, from our emotions and above all from our sensations. Those that allow us to regulate ourselves, to understand ourselves, to know what we need and why we need it.

Playing brings us closer to the present moment, since it is one of the few experiences that are done for the simple pleasure of doing them and not for the result or for what is achieved. or for what is achieved. And that, every moment that we are connected to the present moment, is happiness.

Playing allows the free emergence of our being, of what we need to bring out and express, it opens our spontaneity aligning mind, emotion and body. All those emotions that we accumulate, tensions, anxious symptoms, headaches, among others, can be released in moments of play.

How to recover the game?

Recovering the game can be a somewhat complicated task for some people. The good news is that we are designed and prepared, as a species, for it! Why can it be difficult?

Having been inhibited for so long, unconscious fears of being real and spontaneous can appear. They usually appear in the form of blocks, such as experiencing embarrassment when playing or laughing. Why do we so often cover our faces when we laugh, if it is wonderful?

In addition, we often find that we have substituted "pleasure" for "duty" and this is accompanied by a series of beliefs that can be very limiting when it comes to doubts about "what is right" and "what is wrong" when deciding what to invest my time in.

For all those people who have not been playing for a long time, expressive therapies are ideal. For example, art therapy as a vehicle to connect with oneself, laughter therapy as a practice of "letting go" and "letting go", dance therapy as a means to become aware of the body and release blockages.

Benefits of sharing play with our children

By giving children moments and spaces for free play we allow their development to be much richer. They can explore, they can experience roles that are not their own but that they need to feel, they can discover themselves and above all they can release and express everything that they do not know how to do with words or that they cannot even understand yet.

On the other hand, as a parent, being able to share moments of free play with your child brings many benefits to bonding and attachment.. When I talk about free play, I mean play that is free from correction and free from judgment. A game in which only intentional attention is paid to pleasure, fun, laughter, physical contact, looks and above all unconditional love.

Sharing this type of play means providing security to our child, giving him or her confidence to explore and express. We will be conveying that we care about him or her, that we like to know more about him or her, that his or her company is pleasant for us, that it is important for him or her to express and that it is okay for him or her to do so. We will be validating his or her emotions and freeing him or her from unpleasant feelings of not knowing if it is okay to feel what he or she feels. And with all this, we will also be building a healthy attachment between mother/father and child.

The development of a healthy attachment is one of the most essential aspects of the type of relationships that our children have and will have with the world, with reality and with the people around them.

What games can I play with my children?

Sometimes, we tend to believe that the best activities for our children are those that are very novel and elaborate. Let's break with that myth, it is not necessary that the games are of this type.

They can be games as simple as singing a song, dancing, playing to hold the gaze, guessing with closed eyes when the finger of the other reaches one of the joints of my arm, that each one makes a drawing of the other, guessing flavors, smells, textures, objects with blindfolded eyes, talking imitating an animal, pretending to be an animal, a plant, an object, a fireman, a teacher, or any profession, guessing movies or fictional characters and cartoons, making a massage chain, among many others.

All these games mentioned above are not only games that require very little material, but they also require a lot of time and effort. they are very stimulating games for our children and for ourselves. With them, in addition to benefiting from everything mentioned in the previous paragraphs, we will be stimulating sensorially, providing more body awareness of oneself that will later serve for greater emotional self-regulation.

Therefore, we have seen why play is necessary for a good development, what benefits we get from sharing play and the importance of maintaining it throughout our lives.

Now, it's time to play, enjoy and feel!

"The child who does not play is not a child, but the man who does not play has lost the child who lived in him and who will be sorely missed" -Pablo Neruda

• AuthorCoral Rodríguez. Child and Adolescent Psychologist at ARA Psicología. Specialist in behavioral disorders, emotional management and Mindfulness.