The Power of Play in Recovery

Learning to Play

My mother, though kind, generous, and loving, never learned to play childhood games. Born an only child to two earnest and serious parents who believed they should treat her like a little adult, the fun my mother enjoyed was mature and staid. Thus, I tried to be a little adult, as well. To please my mother, I learned at an early age to play bridge and enjoy symphonies.

Therefore, I am grateful for my father, for although he sometimes embarrassed me with his silly antics and corny jokes, at least he taught me not to take myself too seriously. He taught me how to play.

Not that children really need to be taught how to play. During my childhood, I ran around with the neighborhood kids, playing kick ball and pretending to be mothers and teachers, and I got to have fun at school, because back when I was young, educators still understood that play was a child’s work. Through play, we explore the world, we try things and learn from our mistakes, we find out about ourselves and one another, and we figure out how to get along.

Vivan Gussin Paley, in her book, A Child’s Work, tells the story of some teachers who were concerned because it seemed their students weren’t as nice as children had once been. It’s possible that the teachers were remembering the old classrooms with more nostalgia than accuracy. Older generations have long tended to see younger ones as incorrigible, rude, and selfish.

Play Makes Us Kinder

Yet if today’s children really are more cruel and thoughtless than earlier generations, why is that? Could it be because more families live in poverty these days? [1] Perhaps the culprit is our culture’s emphasis on achievement rather than kindness and obedience. [2] Or maybe the problem is our children’s use and abuse of video games and computers, especially violent ones. [3]

But the teachers in Paley’s story didn’t worry about the why. Instead, they focused on finding a solution. They decided to introduce fantasy play into the classroom. What they discovered, Paley writes, is that the children took “more time to be kind, to solve problems by playing in different ways, to include more kids and let them have a say.” [4]

Regardless of how the children compared to previous generations, the play changed them. Perhaps this happened because the fantasies they created allowed them to process their pain and trauma in a way nothing else could.

Processing with Play

For example, in the opening of her book, Paley describes a group of kindergartners whose play helped them work through the horror of 9/11. Using props and dialogue, the children together created story lines that reenacted the event, but with a twist. Instead of focusing on the death and destruction, the children added their own endings, ones that left them feeling safe and protected. Sometimes, for instance, they swam through imaginary waters to safety, or they infused their jackets with magical powers to protect them, or they invented doctors who could fix all the broken people.

Without any coaching, the children in Paley’s book used a sort of Narrative Therapy to defuse the effects of the trauma. They re-wrote their lives. Throughout her book, Paley describes multiple fantasy tales the children developed, where they processed abuses and worries from their home life. Since One of their classmates had a disability, they used play to figure out how to include him. They learned to cooperate, to be patient, and they came to understand one another by taking part in each other’s stories. In this way, they became more kind.

When Children Don’t Play

What an incredible opportunity these teachers gave their children. In some households, where abuse and neglect is the norm, fantasy play is difficult. Children withdraw, numb themselves, and dare not risk imagination. Bessel van der Kolk, in The Body Keeps the Score, writes that “if we feel abandoned, worthless, or invisible, nothing seems to matter. Fear destroys curiosity and playfulness.” [5]

Had their teacher not given these children such opportunities, how would they heal?

Perhaps they wouldn’t. Not healing is the norm in our country. Partly this is because we adults are afraid of children’s anxiety, so we discourage sharing.

Uncomfortable with Play

Another teacher in Paley’s book felt uncomfortable as she watched the children reenact that disturbing event of 9/11. Seeing the underlying tension in the children’s play, the teacher blamed the play itself, as if without those fantasies, the children would never have felt afraid. Rather than recognizing the healing within their play, the teacher imagined that what the children really needed was more structure. “We’re on safer ground with a somewhat academic curriculum. It’s more dependable.” [6]

Paley argues, however, that there’s nothing more dependable for children than fantasy play, where they control and manipulate the dangers in their lives so they can find a way out, discover solutions, and imagine happy endings. I would suggest that what upset this teacher was not that the fantasy play disturbed the children, but that it disturbed her. An academic curriculum put her on safer ground.

Like fantasy play, theater improvisation and playwrighting have been used successfully to treat traumatic stress in adults and teenagers. Not only do the participants discover something about their own bodies and personalities as they develop and produce performances, but they figure out how to cooperate with one another, to be part of a team. It is like fantasy play for adults, allowing them to benefit from the same kind of narrative processing. [7]

All Kinds of Play

Yet fantasy is not the only kind of play we need. We need the large motor activities of running, chasing, throwing, jumping, dancing, and spinning. Not only does this help us develop physical coordination, but studies show that movement helps our minds develop, allows us to release tension, and helps us regulate our emotions. [8]

Board games and creative outlets like art and music are a type of play, as are puzzles and treasure hunts. Telling jokes, listening to stories, dressing up on Halloween, and dancing are all playful activities. When we grow up, we often think we must set aside childish playthings. In reality, we need to play all our lives.

Yet some people have trouble playing. Trauma, neglect, abuse, and devastating loss can numb us and leave us listless and afraid to engage in the risk-taking of creativity and pretend. Laughter may seem foreign.

We Need Play

Yet without play, we cannot be joyful. Crying helps; raging may do us good to a point. Yet unless we can let go and laugh, tell jokes that gently make fun of our foibles and rigidities, we won’t fully recover from the stresses of everyday life. We need to play games, be silly, dress up, imagine ourselves happy and successful and kind. It helps to explore the depths of our souls in new ways, dream of who we might be and want to be and are. In this way, we heal, we learn, and we become our best selves. By trying on roles and testing behaviors, we learn to laugh at ourselves, to love ourselves, and to feel connected to those around us.

Some of the benefits of play, as listed by Ward-Wimmer, include an increase in beta-endorphins that enhance our sense of well-being, deep and relaxing breaths that increase our oxygen levels, stress relief, better digestion, and fewer body aches. Play encourages empathy, makes us joyful, gives us a sense of mastery, and heals emotional pain.

Still, our culture seems confused about play. It’s almost as if we want to punish children by making their world serious, disciplined, and controlled. Good little boys and girls sit quietly, do their work sheets diligently, and ask no questions. Pretend play is considered frivolous, even dishonest, and light-hearted laughter is discouraged. Yet without play, we become angry, alienated, and loveless. Though we understand how to live by the rules and how to punish those who break them, and though we understand the fear of failure, we don’t understand generosity, forgiveness, and recovery. By substituting too much serious and diligent study for play time, we are stunting a generation of young people. What sort of world will they create?

Addicted Families and a Lack of Playfulness

I am reminded of the older brother in the story Jesus told of the Prodigal Son. Although the younger brother was impulsive, insensitive, and out of control, the older brother was judgmental, rigid, and stern. He didn’t know how to party. He didn’t know how to laugh, love, forgive, or play. Jesus was not holding up the older brother as a paragon of virtue or a model for us to emulate. The elder was as wounded as his younger brother.

In one way, the Prodigal Son story is the story of the addicted family, where children express the pain of their parents through roles such as the Lost Child and the Golden Boy. No one in the family can be complex, spontaneous, or alive. No one in the family can be light-hearted or playful.

The Gift of Playfulness

So what do we do?

We learn again, or for the first time, to let go and experience the joy of games and laughter.

My mother did not know how to let go of control and be silly. She thought children’s games were beneath her. But she did like to laugh. She loved a good story, and she took pleasure in our childlike delight when she took us to visit the zoo or when we discovered the mysteries of ice and soap bubbles and water skippers.

Yet I am grateful to my father, for he taught me that it’s okay to make a fool of myself sometimes. It’s okay to play. In fact, my father helped me discover that play is delightful, healing, and wholesome. Without a willingness to let go and have fun, we cannot fully embrace our recovery.

In faith and fondness,

Barbara

Credits

1. According to “Welfare Indicators and Risk Factors” rates of child poverty increased after 2000 until about 2010, so although rates of poverty appear to have declined slightly, at the time that Paley was writing (2004), greater numbers of families depended on government assistance than in the 1990s.
2. Judith Warner in “Kids Gone Wild,” written in 2005, makes this case.
3. A review of studies done by Danielle Dai and Amanda Fry show that video games may increase aggression and obesity, but also list benefits such as improved reaction times, hand-eye coordination, and pattern recognition.
4. Paley, Vivian Gussin, A Child’s Work: The Importance of Fantasy Play, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 54.
5. Van der Kolk, Bessel, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, New York: Penguin, 2014, 352.
6. Paley 7.
7. See, for example, van der Kolk 332-348 and “Special Issue on Applied Theatre Healing and Trauma” by Gay Morris and Interactive and Improvisational Drama: Varieties of Applied Theatre and Performance, ed. by Adam Blatner.
8. See, for example, van der Kolk 209-210, or “Outcomes of Adaptive Sports and Recreation Participation among Veterans Returning from Combat with Acquired Disability” by Neil Lundberg, Jessie Bennett, Shauna Smith, published in “Therapeutic Recreation Journal,” Vol., XLV, No. 2, pp. 105-120, 2011, or “The Healing Potential of Play” by Dottie Ward-Wimmer, in Play Therapy with Adults by Charles E. Schaefer, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2002, 1-11.

Photo by Alexander Radelich on Unsplash.

Copyright © 2017 Barbara E. Stevens All Rights Reserved