Are they playing or are they simply pushing buttons?

What is your favourite toy? That’s the simple question I put to my seven-year-old students last April, expecting to elicit a never-ending list of vocabulary and heated debate.

To my absolute horror, the vocabulary I was hoping for was muted, and the debate non-existent. The only ‘toy’ my students had any contact with, or interest in for that matter, was the electronic type that one plugs into a television and ‘controls’ (though I would rather use the word ‘obeys’) at the push of a button.

But what about actual toys that do absolutely nothing unless you invent something for them to do, like a car, a doll, blocks, figurines, or – dare I say it – plain old cardboard boxes? Well, let’s just say that my students’ reactions ranged from complete bewilderment to curiosity, none yielding a single word nor sparking a single debate. The answer to my question was simple: we do not play with toys, we play electronic games.

While I am fully aware of the educational benefits certain electronic games may have, not to mention the need to move with the times – which have landed us right in the middle of an electronic era – I cannot help but express deep sadness at the near loss of such a valuable cultural, psychological, educational and social tool: play.

In my humble opinion, the push of a button to satisfy pre-determined criteria may hardly be considered as play, but is merely the act of ‘playing a game’.

Children need the opportunity to explore materials, situations, social realities, concepts, their own imagination and their ideas in a safe and unthreatening context.

Playing with dolls or figurines, dressing up, or simply playing ‘mummies and daddies’ or ‘doctors’ all involve crucial skills which need to be developed in children from a young age, including turn-taking, cooperation with peers, collaboration and, primarily, empathic thought.

Taking on the role of a different persona and acting or responding to situations or people in accordance with that persona is no easy feat for a young, egocentric child. If we do not give our children the opportunity to develop these vital skills then we are in a sense stunting their social and emotional development and hindering their ability to move beyond their egocentricity towards the development of a broader concept of self.

Allowing children to explore different situations through free play also helps to develop and categorise their thought. Children have a very vivid imagination, which features so prominently in their understanding of the world that they often tend to confuse it with reality; play offers a context where children may explore and restructure their different ideas. Play allows children to hypothesise, create, test ideas, and adjust their conceptual understanding of the world around them, which is often distorted and mixed with elements of fantasy.

Besides targeting their social, emotional and intellectual development, play is also fundamental in children’s lives as it gives them the opportunity to just be themselves, within whichever developmental stage they may be.

It does not demand any more or less of them than they are willing and able to give, an experience which is a rapidly fading reality for today’s children. Children are either babied, spoon-fed and over-protected at home, or moulded into mini-adults, and disciplined into conformists at school, leaving little time for them to simply be children.

No running because you might fall, no talking because you’ll make noise, don’t eat that because you’ll make a mess, and sit straight, don’t move. When you think about the things we tell our children and the things they are forced to do, it’s no wonder so many of them are diagnosed with attention disorders and myriad other problems.

It’s time to wake up. There is no problem in a child being what his brain and body are telling him to be; the problem only lies in the society which is forcing him to abandon his very childhood.

Why should we deprive children of the opportunity to learn in the way they know and love best, only to train them into the silent and passive habit of following the directions and ideas set out by somebody else?

There is no mind more imaginative than that of a child, so let your child do the imagining for a change. If you were to join them in their play, you’d be surprised at what you could learn from them.

So with Christmas around the corner, shops stuffed with endless rows of toys, and the blissful holidays coming up, what I propose is this: take your children out, let them roll in the dirt, let them run, help them to climb a tree, teach them to ride a bike – and have a word with Santa about what to put, and what not to put, in those eagerly-anticipated Christmas stockings.

Ms Ripard is a B.Ed. primary student at the University of Malta.

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